A layered software city for dependency visualization (Best Paper Award)

Dashuber V, Philippsen M, Weigend J (2021)

Publication Language: English

Publication Type: Conference contribution, Conference Contribution

Publication year: 2021

Publisher: SciTePress

City/Town: Portugal

Book Volume: 3

Pages Range: 15 - 26

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 3: IVAPP

Event location: Virtual, originally Vienna, Austria

ISBN: 978-989-758-488-6

URI: http://www.ivapp.visigrapp.org

DOI: 10.5220/0010180200150026

Open Access Link: https://www.scitepress.org/PublicationsDetail.aspx?ID=60MwJRH53eU=&t=1

Abstract

A Software City is a an established way to visualize metrics such as the test coverage or complexity. As current
layouting algorithms are mainly based on the static code structure (e.g., classes and packages), dependencies
that are orthogonal to this structure often clutter the visualization and are hard to grasp. This paper applies
layered graph drawing to layout a Software City in 3D. The proposed layout takes both the dependencies
and the static code structure into account. This minimizes the number of explicitly displayed dependencies.
The resulting lower cognitive load makes the software architecture easier to understand. We evaluate the
advantages of our layout over a classic layouting algorithm in a controlled study on a real world project.

Authors with CRIS profile

Veronika Dashuber
Michael Philippsen Lehrstuhl für Informatik 2 (Programmiersysteme)

Related research project(s)

Cooperative Exploration and Analysis of Software in a Virtual/Augmented Reality Appliance (Holoware) Kooperative Exploration und Analyse von Software in einer Virtual/Augmented Reality Appliance Sept. 1, 2018 - Dec. 31, 2022

Involved external institutions

QAware GmbH DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Dashuber, V., Philippsen, M., & Weigend, J. (2021). A layered software city for dependency visualization (Best Paper Award). In Christophe Hurter, Helen Purchase, Jose Braz, Kadi Bouatouch (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 3: IVAPP (pp. 15 - 26). Virtual, originally Vienna, Austria: Portugal: SciTePress.

MLA:

Dashuber, Veronika, Michael Philippsen, and Johannes Weigend. "A layered software city for dependency visualization (Best Paper Award)." Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications, VISIGRAPP 2021, Virtual, originally Vienna, Austria Ed. Christophe Hurter, Helen Purchase, Jose Braz, Kadi Bouatouch, Portugal: SciTePress, 2021. 15 - 26.

BibTeX: Download