Software Visualization in 3D: Implementation, Evaluation, and Applicability

The focus of this thesis is on the implementation, the evaluation and the useful application of the third dimension in software visualization. Software engineering is characterized by a complex interplay of different stakeholders that produce and use several artifacts. Software visualization is used as one mean to address this increasing complexity. It provides role- and task-specific views of artifacts that contain information about structure, behavior, and evolution of a software system in its entirety. The main potential of the third dimension is the possibility to provide multiple views in one software visualization for all three aspects. However, empirical findings concerning the role of the third dimension in software visualization are rare. Furthermore, there are only few 3D software visualizations that provide multiple views of a software system including all three aspects. Finally, the current tool support lacks of generating easy integrateable, scalable, and platform independent 2D, 2.5D, and 3D software visualizations automatically. Hence, the objective is to develop a software visualization that represents all important structural entities and relations of a software system, that can display behavioral and evolutionary aspects of a software system as well, and that can be generated automatically. In order to achieve this objective the following research methods are applied. A literature study is conducted, a software visualization generator is conceptualized and prototypically implemented, a structured approach to plan and design controlled experiments in software visualization is developed, and a controlled experiment is designed and performed to investigate the role of the third dimension in software visualization. The main contributions are an overview of the state-of-the-art in 3D software visualization, a structured approach including a theoretical model to control influence factors during controlled experiments in software visualization, an Eclipse-based generator for producing automatically role- and task-specific 2D, 2.5D, and 3D software visualizations, the controlled experiment investigating the role of the third dimension in software visualization, and the recursive disk metaphor combining the findings with focus on the structure of software including useful applications of the third dimension regarding behavior and evolution

Reverse Engineering and Testing of Rich Internet Applications

The World Wide Web experiences a continuous and constant evolution, where new initiatives, standards, approaches and technologies are continuously proposed for developing more effective and higher quality Web applications. To satisfy the growing request of the market for Web applications, new technologies, frameworks, tools and environments that allow to develop Web and mobile applications with the least effort and in very short time have been introduced in the last years. These new technologies have made possible the dawn of a new generation of Web applications, named Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), that offer greater usability and interactivity than traditional ones. This evolution has been accompanied by some drawbacks that are mostly due to the lack of applying well-known software engineering practices and approaches. As a consequence, new research questions and challenges have emerged in the field of web and mobile applications maintenance and testing. The research activity described in this thesis has addressed some of these topics with the specific aim of proposing new and effective solutions to the problems of modelling, reverse engineering, comprehending, re-documenting and testing existing RIAs. Due to the growing relevance of mobile applications in the renewed Web scenarios, the problem of testing mobile applications developed for the Android operating system has been addressed too, in an attempt of exploring and proposing new techniques of testing automation for these type of applications

Designing your next empirical study on program comprehension

The field of program comprehension is characterized by both the continuing development of new tools and techniques and the adaptation of existing techniques to address program comprehension needs for new software development and maintenance scenarios. The adoption of these techniques and tools in industry requires proper experimentation to assess the advantages and disadvantages of each technique or tool and to let the practitioners choose the most suitable approach for a specific problem. The objective of this working session is to encourage researchers and practitioners working in the area of program comprehension to join forces to design and carry out studies related to program comprehension, including observational studies, controlled experiments, case studies, surveys, and contests, and to develop standards for describing and carrying out such studies in a way that facilitates replication of data and aggregation of the results of related studies

Uma abordagem híbrida para construção de documentação para apoio à instanciação de frameworks

Software reuse is one of the major goals in Software Engineering. Frameworks promote the reuse of individual building blocks, but also of system design. Framework instantiation is the construction of an application reusing a framework. This process requires a substantial understanding effort of the framework. So, high quality documentation may be a useful resource to minimize this effort. However, in most cases, appropriate documentation neither exists nor is up-to-date. A hypothesis is that the framework code itself and existing instantiations could provide useful information for new instantiations. However, in this case developers still would have to read large portions of code. The goal of this thesis is to demonstrate the feasibility of constructing relevant documentation for framework instantiation with static and dynamic analysis of the framework itself and pre-existing instantiations. The proposal is presenting the documentation in a cookbook style, where recipes are composed of programming tasks and information about framework elements related to a desired feature. Initially, two preliminary experiments were conducted to evaluate coverage and practical usefulness of the recipe information for developers. Results pointed out the need for some adjustments, but also indicated sufficient and relevant information in recipes. Finally, we performed a robust study, consisting of three experiments with 44 human subjects, and 88 executions of real framework instantiations. We compared the use of cookbooks with the use of traditional framework documentation. The generated cookbooks presented results better or as good as traditional framework documentation, in terms of correctness, time spent and the satisfaction perception of document uses.Tese (Doutorado)Reuso de software é um dos principais objetivos em Engenharia de Software. Frameworks de aplicação promovem a reutilização de blocos de construção, mas também da solução arquitetural para um determinado domínio de aplicação. A criação de uma aplicação reutilizando um framework denomina-se instanciação do framework e requer um esforço substancial de compreensão do mesmo. Uma documentação de alta qualidade pode ser um instrumento útil para minimizar esse esforço. No entanto, na maioria dos casos, a documentação adequada não existe ou não é atualizada. Uma hipótese é que o próprio código fonte do framework e de instâncias existentes poderiam oferecer informação útil para novas instanciações. Contudo, haveria o desafio dos desenvolvedores entenderem quantidade substancial de código fonte. Neste contexto, o objetivo desta tese é demonstrar a viabilidade de construção de documentação relevante para a instanciação de frameworks utilizando análise estática e dinâmica do código fonte do framework e de suas instanciações pré-existentes. A proposta é apresentar tal documentação como um livro de receitas, onde as receitas são compostas de tarefas de programação e informações sobre os elementos do framework associados a uma característica de interesse. Inicialmente, dois estudos preliminares foram realizados para avaliar a cobertura e a utilidade prática das informações contidas nas receitas, os quais mostraram a necessidade de alguns ajustes, mas também indicaram receitas com informações relevantes e cobertura adequada. Por fim, foi conduzido um estudo robusto composto de 3 experimentos envolvendo ao todo 44 sujeitos humanos, com 88 execuções de atividades reais de instanciação de frameworks, onde o uso de livros de receitas foi comparado ao uso de documentações tradicionais dos frameworks. Os livros de receitas gerados semi-automaticamente apresentaram resultados de uso iguais ou melhores, em termos de taxa de acerto, tempo de execução e percepção da satisfação dos usuários, cumprindo os objetivos de pesquisa