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Institute
Anpaßbare, explorierbare virtuelle Informationsräume zur Qualitätsbewertung großer Software-Systeme
(2001)
Metrics Based Refactoring
(2001)
CrocoCosmos
(2002)
Coherent Software Cities are a software visualization approach which adopts the city metaphor to support the comprehension of various aspects of evolving software systems. For this purpose, the approach implements a three-staged modeling chain yielding coherent sets of application specific visualizations. In this context, a new layout approach for software cities is presented, which explicitly takes development history into account. Its effects are twofold: First, evolution becomes visible in the layouts, which allows for supporting new application scenarios. Second, layouts evolve smoothly and stable during system evolution, which allows software cities to be used online, i.e. during ongoing system development and maintenance.
Abstract. SoftUrbs is a systematic approach to utilize the City metaphor for the visualization and interpretation of large software systems as urban structures. The maincontributions are, firstly, a systematic approach to construct and use these visualizations by adopting thethree-staged cartographic modeling chain and, secondly, the use of force-directed layouts of the city map. The latter provides a framework for flexible and incrementally adaptable layouts, which are necessary to preserve a city's overall morphology throughout the structural evolution of the visualized software system. The distinction between different model stages helps to create uniform and consistent visualizations supporting different usage scenarios. The conceptshave been implemented and were successfully applied in some large scale industry projects.
Software cities are visualizations of software systems in the form of virtual cities. They are used as platforms to integrate a large variety of product- and process-related analysis data. Their usability, however, for real-world software development often suffers from their inability to appropriately deal with software changes. Even small structural changes can disrupt the overall structure of the city, which in turn corrupts the mental maps of its users. In this article we describe a systematic approach to utilize the city metaphor for the visualization of evolving software systems as growing software cities. The main contribution is a new layout approach which explicitly takes the development history of software systems into account. The approach has two important effects: first, it creates a stable gestalt of software cities even when the underlying software systems evolve; thus, by preserving its users’ mental maps these cities are especially suitable for use during ongoing system development. Second, it makes history directly visible in the city layouts, which allows for supporting novel analysis scenarios. We illustrate such scenarios by presenting several thematic cities’ maps, each capturing specific development history aspects.
Abstract. In this paper we describe a systematic approach to utilize the citymetaphor for the visualization of large software systems asevolving software cities. The main contribution is a new layoutapproach which explicitly takes the development history ofsoftware systems into account and makes history directly visiblein the layouts. These layouts incrementally evolve in a verysmooth and stable way during the development of the representedsoftware system. They are used as a visualization platform forintegrating a large variety of product and process data and thuscreate a coherent set of specialized visualizations. To illustratethis we present some example maps capturing specificdevelopment history aspects.