A knowledge-based toolkit for software visualisation

Abstract

Understanding an existing program includes the analysis of the program code, as, very often, the program code is the only reliable source of information about the program. Many code analysis tools offer the user a possibility to examine the program code through a predefined set of graphical views. These tools can be considerably improved by using knowledge-based techniques. Knowledge-based code analysis tools allow the user to employ his own knowledge about programs and their analysis.The paper discusses a knowledge-based toolkit for graphical presentation, or visualisation, of programs: its architecture, the implementation and results of work. It is advocated that the introduction of knowledge-based techniques increases the extensibility and mod$ability of the code analysers. In addition, the user of a knowledgebased toolkit is offered an intelligent environment for storing knowledge about programs and peqorming reasoning on it.

Software visualization in the desert environment

“…The various approaches to algorithm animation generally inc1ude.a front end for defining the visualization as in DANCE [30] or the rule-based approach of Pavane [25]. Another approach uses a knowledge base with information about the program in a software model and information layouts in a view model to create customized visualizations [28]. This approach, while more general than ours, is also more restrictive in having a limited repertoire of visualizations (graphs) and a limited domain.…”