Abstract

As current software keeps growing in size and complexity, the means to visualize its structure become insufficient. Noticeably, standard UML diagrams and their implementations in the industrial tools can depict only diagrams of certain level of complexity. When the complexity rises above this level, the diagrams become no longer visually understandable and start to hinder analytical reasoning. This is mostly a problem of diagrams created during automated reverse-engineering processes. In this study we summarize and validate a new approach for software structure visualization which aims at supporting visual presentation of large software systems. It combines a notation derived from the UML component diagram with tool-supported interaction, utilizing features like hiding of unnecessary information that can be revealed on demand to reduce complexity of the diagrams. To validate the approach, we implemented an experimental tool that provides both the notation and interactive features. The main contribution of this study is an evaluation of the approach through a user study. The results of the user evaluation suggest that the proposed notation in combination with the interactive features allows users to gain insight into a visualized application faster in comparison to standard UML as supported by industrial tools.

Keywords:

Complexity, component diagrams, diagram interaction techniques, software visualization, UML, user study,

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The authors have no competing interests.

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