Visualizing Modules and Dependencies of OSGi-Based Applications

Abstract

The architecture of software it not tangible; but in different situations it is preferable to have it tangible. For example, while reviewing it against the intended design, introducing the software to others, or starting to develop on a new part. Basic aspects of a software architecture are the modules the software is constructed of and the dependencies between them. To comprehend these aspects is important especially for software using a technology such as OSGi, which key concept is modularization. In this paper, we describe interactive visualization tools that we developed to comprehend OSGi-based applications with their modules and dependencies. We focus on concepts to treat large number of modules and dependencies: navigation, filtering, and selection. We applied our solution for OSGi-based applications with hundreds of modules containing multiple submodules each. With the resulting visualizations, we can explore the modularization of the software architecture.

An empirical evaluation of OSGi dependencies best practices in the eclipse IDE

“…Seider et al explore modularization of OSGi-based components using an interactive visualization tool [37]. They extract information from meta-data files and organize it at different abstraction levels (e.g., package and service).…”

Interactive Visualization of Software Components with Virtual Reality Headsets

“…This allows to deploy the tool via the Google Play Store. 2 1) Visualization of bundles, packages, and services: The general scene that is visible after starting the tool (Figure 8) shows bundles (large cubical objects), packages (small cubical objects) stacked over each other on top of bundles, and services (discs around packages). A white circle represents the pointer, which helps to select bundles or packages.…”

“…To explore the potential of VR headsets for visualization of component-based software architecture, we developed a tool for visualizing OSGi-based applications. Based on previous visualizations and a tool chain for 2D [2], we present the following contributions:…”

Adopting Conversational Interfaces for Exploring OSGi-Based Software Architectures in Augmented Reality

“…Exploring large-scale OSGi-based software architectures with interrelationships among multiple software components is a challenging exercise. To improve the exploration task, we developed multiple approaches in 2D, 3D, and Virtual Reality (VR) to visualize software architectures [5], [2]. To this end, different OSGi concepts such as Bundles, Packages and Services are mapped to elements of an island metaphor for visualization.…”