Immersive software archaeology
exploring software architecture and design in virtual reality
Informazioni aggiuntive
Autori
Hoff A.,
Seidl C.,
Lanza M.
Tipo
Contributo in atti di convegno
Anno
2024
Lingua
Inglese
Sommario
Comprehending large-scale software systems is a challenging and daunting task, particularly when only source code is available. While software visualization attempts to aid that process, existing tools primarily visualize a system's structure in terms of files, folders, packages, or namespaces, neglecting its logical decomposition into cohesive architectural components. We present the tool Immersive Software Archaeology (ISA) which (i) estimates a view of a system's architecture by utilizing concepts from software architecture recovery and (ii) visualizes the results in virtual reality (VR) so that users can explore a subject system interactively, making the process more engaging. In VR, a semantic zoom lets users gradually transition between architectural components of different granularity and class-level elements while relationship graphs let users navigate along connections across classes and architectural components. We present results from a controlled experiment with 54 participants to investigate the usefulness of ISA for assisting engineers with exploring an unfamiliar large-scale system compared to another state-of-the-art VR approach and an IDE.
Parole chiave
Software visualization, Software architecture visualization, Software comprehension, Software re-engineering
Titolo atti di convegno
2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)
Pagine (o numero dell’articolo)
47-51
Diffusione
Licenza
Licenza non definita
Visibilità
Pubblico
Status open access
Green
