Visualization of Evolution of Component-Based Software Architectures in Virtual Reality

Abstract

The visualization of software architectures by the use of effective and feasible visual metaphors provides an intuitive approach to comprehend the implemented architecture of a software project. In this regard not only the visualization of the latest status of the implemented architecture is important, but also the visualization of the history of software architectures. Such visualizations show dependencies and contexts in which design decisions were made. Resulting information supports programmers to understand systems and to recognize disadvantageous design decisions. A software which is particularly suited for the visualization of component-based software is IslandViz. This software visualizes OSGi-based software architectures in Virtual Reality with an island metaphor, but at this point the history of an architecture is not taken into account. In this paper we present how IslandViz can be extended to visualize the history of software architectures of OSGi-based software projects. For this purpose we use algorithms for dynamic graphs to realize a dynamic positioning of the islands and an adaptable layout of the regions on the islands. The aim is to ensure that the user's orientation in the virtual environment is preserved even if elements of the visualization must adapt due to changes in the software history.

Immersive Software Archaeology: Exploring Software Architecture and Design in Virtual Reality

“…Many software visualization tools exist that present a system's architecture [5], [6], both in 2D (e.g., Polymetric Views [7], Samoa [8], Softwarenaut [9], Beck et al [10]) and 3D (e.g., Balzer and Deussen [11], IslandViz [12], ExplorViz [13], CityVR [14], CodeCity [15]). Experiments showed that using a well-constructed 3D software visualization is more effective than using an IDE in terms of correctness and completion time for software comprehension tasks [15].…”

“…Metaphors for 3D software visualization can be divided into abstract metaphors (e.g., 3D graphs [11], [19], [20]) and realworld metaphors (e.g., city metaphor [14], [15], [17], island metaphor [12], or solar metaphors [21]- [24]). A metaphor has to be expressive enough to describe different abstraction levels without breaking while letting users transition between these.…”

Uniquifying Architecture Visualization through Variable 3D Model Generation

“…2D metaphors are mostly abstract graphs, trees, and diagrams [2,12,23]. 3D metaphors borrow analogies from the physical world to exploit viewers' familiarity with real-world constructs, e.g., cities, islands, or planets [1,8,10,13,17,26,28]. 3D software visualizations can be distinguished by the medium they employ, i.e., computer screens, augmented reality, or virtual reality [16,18].…”

“…of structural system aspects, is essential for gaining an overview of a system's architecture [6,11]. However, existing software visualization [1,8,10,17,28] is hampered by a pivotal problem: The structural visualizations of different parts of a software system are hard to differentiate due to repetitive and complex patterns in the visual representation that cannot easily be distinguished (see Figure 1).…”

Lightweight Software Architecture Evaluation for Industry: A Comprehensive Review

“…It is essential to detect software architecture (SA) problems before software development, but it is not easy to analyze SA because of software heterogeneity and the arrangement of software components [ 1 , 2 ]. Consequently, the problematic SA leads to project failure; therefore, different big, upfront designs are sketched based on the experiences of software analysts to explore the SA problems in the early phase [ 3 ].…”