Visual Tools for Software Architecture Understanding: A Stakeholder Perspective

Abstract

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The Solid* toolset for software visual analytics of program structure and metrics comprehension: From research prototype to product

“…We use herein the concept of a tool value model [72]: A SVA tool is useful if it delivers high value with minimal waste to its stakeholders, which can be developers, testers, project managers, or consultants [33,73]. Hence, the answers to the above-mentioned questions strongly depend on the users' views on value and waste, as follows.…”

“…ACM SOFTVIS, IEEE VISSOFT, MSR, ICPC, WCRE, ICSE, and CSMR, building useful and used tools is difficult. Reasons cited for this include the small return-on-investment and recognition of tools in academia (as opposed to papers), high maintenance cost, and high ratio of infrastructure-to-novelty (truly usable tools need fine-tuned implementations, help modules, and platform-independence, while research prototypes can focus on novelty) [5,3,32,33]. Combining analysis and visualization in one tool makes development only more complex, so good design patterns and guidelines are essential.…”

Temporal Multivariate Networks

“…Examples of graphs Requirements Requirements vs tasks vs stakeholders [60] UML use-case diagrams [91] Architecting System structure (layering, dataflows, component interactions) [100] UML component and package diagrams [ Data characteristics Temporal multivariate SE graphs have several characteristics which make their computation, efficient manipulation, and above all understanding very challenging. Below we outline the main such aspects.…”

To Enlighten Hidden Facts in The Code: A Review of Software Visualization Metaphors

“…Selected papers have indicated an increasing interest in not only visualization of software components, their properties, relationships, but also their evolution, behavior and instruction execution [1][3] [7]. In order to present various tasks clearly, this review adopted the classification proposed by Stephan Diehl [3], concerning with visualizing static analysis, dynamic execution of program and evolution of code.…”

“…Due to the high turnover rate and changing industry environments, engineers have encountered challenge in software comprehension and maintenance. Particularly, studies indicate that 80% of the software costs are used for maintenance, in which 40% is devoted to understand source code [1]. It is recognized that people are better at deducing information from graphical image than numerical and textual formats [2].…”