Scalable visualizations to support reverse engineering: a framework for evaluation

Abstract

degrees throughout the software development cycle as aids to comprehension, analysis, and measurement. This research focuses on the experimental evaluation and refinement of a set of scalable visualizations that show promise for improving the overall software process. The roles which visualizations may play during reverse engineering and maintenance are of particular interest. This research also investigates the manner in which software visualizations are used in practice by software professionals. Partners from government and industry have agreed to participate by providing access to appropriate production software. This paper ~'11 descn'be a framework for evaluating visual techniques and investigating their practical use and application,

The effectiveness of control structure diagrams in source code comprehension activities

“…Appendix A illustrates the CSD for Java's major control structures, while a more complete discussion of the CSD is given in [14].…”

“…It is clear from experience and from reports in the literature that a relationship exists between the syntactic form of source code and the ability of programmers to construct useful mental abstractions from that source code [11], [14]. Source code that is well structured and visually appealing facilitates the comprehension process.…”

Software visualization

“…Research over the years has envisioned different aspects of source code, the code itself, data flow, and run-time behavior. SV has been applied in various areas like algorithm animation [20,34], software engineering, concurrent program execution [23], static and dynamic visualizations of object-oriented code [81,89], fault diagnostics [1,95], debugging [4], and requirements analysis [24], to name a few. An extensive compilation of research relating to these fields can be found in [28,58,108].…”