Generic three-dimensional visualization for distributed simulations

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Visualizing and Analyzing the Structure of AspectJ Software under the Eclipse Platform

Software is naturally intangible and abstract which makes the understanding task difficult. There is a growing need for visualizations that improve the comprehensiveness of its structure, behavior and evolution. Graphically visualizing abstract concepts provides a way to raise the abstraction level and therefore, to reduce the software complexity. The graphical synthetic view that gives a quick idea of its content, logic, structure and its entities' relationships. It is widely accepted that it can represent a valuable support during the development and maintenance processes. As AspectJ is a relatively new language with powerful specific constructs, it deserves support tools to visualize its software systems. This paper presents our recent work in software visualization with respect to analyze and visualize the AspectJ software structures using graphical elements well-known from daily life such as the Polymetric View and the City Metaphor to conduct various powerful analyses and permit an intuitive understanding of a given visualization and therefore, to get quickly an overview of a huge and complex software. VizzAspectJ-2D and VizzAspectJ-3D are two tools support we have built on top of the Eclipse platform respectively for the 2D and 3D visualizations

Visualization of the Static aspects of Software: a survey

International audienceSoftware is usually complex and always intangible. In practice, the development and maintenance processes are time-consuming activities mainly because software complexity is difficult to manage. Graphical visualization of software has the potential to result in a better and faster understanding of its design and functionality, saving time and providing valuable information to improve its quality. However, visualizing software is not an easy task because of the huge amount of information comprised in the software. Furthermore, the information content increases significantly once the time dimension to visualize the evolution of the software is taken into account. Human perception of information and cognitive factors must thus be taken into account to improve the understandability of the visualization. In this paper, we survey visualization techniques, both 2D- and 3D-based, representing the static aspects of the software and its evolution. We categorize these techniques according to the issues they focus on, in order to help compare them and identify the most relevant techniques and tools for a given problem

Etude de la visualisation de code en lien avec les ontologies métier

La maintenance logicielle est une tâche importante du software engineering. Celle-ci représente entre 60% à 90% du coût total du logiciel. Une des tâches les plus difficiles de la maintenance est la compréhension de l’application. Des récentes études démontrent que les développeurs passent entre 60 et 80% de leur temps à comprendre le fonctionnement du logiciel avant de faire une quelconque opération de maintenance. Cette phase est nécessaire, car pour réaliser une opération de maintenance, il faut comprendre le code source et le fonctionnement de celui-ci. Il existe actuellement plusieurs manières d’analyses de code, dynamiques et statiques liées au reverse engineering qui permettent de fournir des visualisations du logiciel. En revanche, celles-ci ne permettent pas de faire la liaison entre l’ontologie métier et le code source du logiciel, par conséquent, la tâche de localiser le code source associé à l’ontologie métier revient au développeur. En effet, la liaison entre l’ontologie métier et le code source permet de comprendre le logiciel en localisant les différents concepts métiers implémentés dans le code source. Le but de mon travail consiste à explorer les techniques existantes de visualisations de code associées aux ontologies métiers, afin d’identifier un modèle prometteur et à implémenter un prototype

Visualising The Complex Features Of Source Code

Software development is a complex undertaking composed of several activities that include reading, writing, and modifying source code. Indeed, previous studies have shown that the majority of the effort invested in software development is dedicated to understanding code. This includes understanding the static structure, dynamic behaviour, and evolution of the code. Given these particular characteristics, as well as the high complexity of source code, it is reasonable to consider how visualisation can facilitate source code understanding. This work proposes to extend existing software development tools with visualisations that can be used to encode the various complex features within a source code document. Further, this work establishes a design space which includes a series of visualisations that are meant to complement existing textual views of source code, as found in source code editors. Several prototype visualisations are presented in this work which utilise various visualisation techniques, such as tree visualisations techniques and visualisation techniques based on the code-map metaphor. This work also presents several experiments, where the results of these experiments indicate that combining existing software development tools with visualisations can have a positive effect on source code understanding. Additionally, the result of the experiments show that the less a visualisation is abstracted from the original textural representation of a source code document, in terms of line, token, ordering, and character information, the more likely it is that viewers can link the visualisation to the code and back

CoMoVA - A comprehension measurement framework for visualization systems

Despite the burgeoning interest shown in visualizations by many disciplines, there yet remains the unresolved question concerning comprehension. Is the concept that is being communicated through the visual easily grasped and clearly interpreted? Visual comprehension is that characteristic of any visualization system, which deals with how efficiently and effectively users are able to grasp the underlying concepts through suitable interactions provided for exploring the visually represented information. Comprehension has been considered a very complex subject, which is intangible and subjective in nature. Assessment of comprehension can help to determine the true usefulness of visualization systems to the intended users. A principal contribution of this research is the formulation of an empirical evaluation framework for systematically assessing comprehension support provided by a visualization system to its intended users. To assess comprehension i.e. to measure this seemingly immeasurable factor of visualization systems, we propose a set of criteria based on a detailed analysis of information flow from the raw data to the cognition of information in human mind. Our comprehension criteria are adapted from the pioneering work of two eminent researchers - Donald A. Norman and Aaron Marcus, who have investigated the issues of human perception and cognition, and visual effectiveness respectively. The proposed criteria have been refined with the help of opinions from experts. To gauge and verify the efficacy of these criteria in a practical sense, they were then applied to a bioinformatics visualization study tool and an immersive art visualization environment. Given the vast variety of users and their visualization goals, it may be noted that it is difficult for one to decide on the effectiveness of different visualization tools/techniques in a context independent fashion. We therefore propose an innovative way of evaluating a visualization technique by encapsulating it in a visualization pattern where it is seen as a solution to the visualization problem in a specific context. These visualization patterns guide the tool users/evaluators to compare, understand and select appropriate visualization tools/techniques. Lastly, we propose a novel framework named as CoMoVA (Comprehension Model for Visualization Assessment) that incorporates 'context of use', visualization patterns, visual design principles and important cognitive principles into a coherent whole that can be used to effectively tell us in a more quantifiable manner the benefits of visual representations and interactions provided by a system to the intended audience. Our approach of evaluation of visualization systems is similar to other questionnaire-based approaches such as SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory), where all the questions deal with the measurement of a common trait. We apply this framework to two static software visualization tools in the software visualization domain to demonstrate the practical benefits of using such a framework

Evaluating Extensible 3D (X3D) Graphics For Use in Software Visualisation

3D web software visualisation has always been expensive, special purpose, and hard to program. Most of the technologies used require large amounts of scripting, are not reliable on all platforms, are binary formats, or no longer maintained. We can make end-user web software visualisation of object-oriented programs cheap, portable, and easy by using Extensible (X3D) 3D Graphics, which is a new open standard. In this thesis we outline our experience with X3D and discuss the suitability of X3D as an output format for software visualisation

The Effectiveness of Aural Instructions with Visualisations in E-Learning Environments

Based on Mayer’s (2001) model for more effective learning by exploiting the brain’s dual sensory channels for information processing, this research investigates the effectiveness of using aural instructions together with visualisation in teaching the difficult concepts of data structures to novice computer science students. A small number of previous studies have examined the use of audio and visualisation in teaching and learning environments but none has explored the integration of both technologies in teaching data structures programming to reduce the cognitive load on learners’ working memory. A prototype learning tool, known as the Data Structure Learning (DSL) tool, was developed and used first in a short mini study that showed that, used together with visualisations of algorithms, aural instructions produced faster student response times than did textual instructions. This result suggested that the additional use of the auditory sensory channel did indeed reduce the cognitive load. The tool was then used in a second, longitudinal, study over two academic terms in which students studying the Data Structures module were offered the opportunity to use the DSL approach with either aural or textual instructions. Their use of the approach was recorded by the DSL system and feedback was invited at the end of every visualisation task. The collected data showed that the tool was used extensively by the students. A comparison of the students’ DSL use with their end-of-year assessment marks revealed that academically weaker students had tended to use the tool most. This suggests that less able students are keen to use any useful and available instrument to aid their understanding, especially of difficult concepts. Both the quantitative data provided by the automatic recording of DSL use and an end-of-study questionnaire showed appreciation by students of the help the tool had provided and enthusiasm for its future use and development. These findings were supported by qualitative data provided by student written feedback at the end of each task, by interviews at the end of the experiment and by interest from the lecturer in integrating use of the tool with the teaching of the module. A variety of suggestions are made for further work and development of the DSL tool. Further research using a control group and/or pre and post tests would be particularly useful