1. TOWARDS AN OPEN SOURCE STACK TO
CREATE A UNIFIED DATA SOURCE FOR
SOFTWARE ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION
VISSOFT 2018
Madrid, September 24, 2018
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche,
Markus Harrer

2. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
HOW TO GET A UNIFIED DATA SOURCE FOR
SOFTWARE ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION?
2
?
[Diehl 2007]

3. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
HOW TO GET A UNIFIED DATA SOURCE FOR
SOFTWARE ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION?
3
Software data naturally maps to a
multivariate, compound, attributed,
and time-dependent graph
[Diehl & Telea 2014]

4. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
CHALLENGES IN CREATING, STORING, AND
QUERYING SOFTWARE DATA
1. Schema
 How to model a given aspect of a software system in
terms of entities, relations, and attributes?
2. Selection
 How to select data relevant for a given task from an entire
graph?
3. Implementation
 How to store the graph in a way that is efficient for quickly
reading and writing large amounts of data?
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[Diehl & Telea 2014]

5. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
OPEN SOURCE STACK
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6. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
DATA ACQUISITION
 Plugins scan different kinds of software
artifacts, e.g.,
 Java bytecode, Git, Jacoco, Findbugs
 The extracted data is stored as a graph in
a Neo4j database
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7. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
ANALYSIS
 Aggregation and enrichment
 Rules analyze and modify the graphs
 Concepts aggregate, enrich, and unify the data
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8. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
ANALYSIS
 Filtering
 Cypher queries filter relevant data and
return tabular or graph results
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9. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
VISUALIZATION
 Views are dynamically created based on the
query result using D3 visualization components
embedded in a React app
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Hotspot analysis
view
type = nesting of
circles
loc = size of circles
commits = color of
circles

10. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
PROOF OF CONCEPT
 Software Analysis and Visualization Dashboard as one
visualization frontend for the open source stack
 Supports project leaders in decision-making
 Provides interactive views concerning architecture and
dependencies as well as resource, risk, and quality
management
 https://github.com/softvis-research/jqa-dashboard
 Screencast demonstrating the data acquisition, analysis,
and visualization of JUnit
 https://youtu.be/LebVqfzQ_KE
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11. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
RELATED WORK
 Tools for parsing, modeling, and querying software data
 Moose [Nierstrasz et al. 2005]
 Famix, Dynamix, and Hismo [Ducasse et al. 2011, Greevy 2007, Gîrba
et al. 2005]
 Rascal [Klint et al. 2009]
 Recent approaches using a graph database for storing
and querying software data
 VerX-Combo [Yano et al. 2015]
 Swarm Debugging Prototype [Petrillo et al. 2015]
 VIMETRIK and KNIME [Khan et al. 2015, Berthold et al. 2009]
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12. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
BENEFITS OF THE PROPOSED STACK
 Fills research gap
 Tackles the challenges in creating, storing, and querying
heterogeneous software data
 Customizable
 Is extendable with scanner plugins for further software
artifacts
 Reusable
 Has an interchangeable visualization frontend
 Open Source
 Consists of loosely coupled Open Source components
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13. VISSOFT 2018 | Towards an Open Source Stack to Create a Unified Data Source for Software Analysis and Visualization
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
REFERENCES
 S. Diehl, Software Visualization: Visualizing the Structure, Behaviour, and Evolution of Software. Springer, 2007.
 S. Diehl and A. C. Telea, Multivariate Graphs in Software Engineering, ser. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham:
Springer International Publishing, 2014, vol. 8380, ch. 2, pp. 13–36.
 O. Nierstrasz, S. Ducasse, and T. Gîrba, “The story of moose: an agile reengineering environment,” in Proc. 10th Eur.
Softw. Eng. Conf. held jointly with 13th SIGSOFT Int. Symp. Found. Softw. Eng., vol. 30. Lisbon, Portugal: ACM, 2005,
pp. 1–10.
 S. Ducasse, N. Anquetil, U. Bhatti, A. C. Hora, J. Laval, and T. Gˆırba, “MSE and FAMIX 3.0: an interexchange format
and source code model family,” p. 40, 2011.
 O. Greevy, “Dynamix - a meta-model to support feature-centric analy- sis,” in 1st Int. Work. FAMIX Moose
Reengineering, 2007.
 T. Gîrba, J. M. Favre, and S. Ducasse, “Using meta-model transforma- tion to model software evolution,” Electron.
Notes Theor. Comput. Sci., vol. 137, no. 3, pp. 57–64, 2005.
 P. Klint, T. van der Storm, and J. Vinju, “RASCAL: A Domain Specific Language for Source Code Analysis and
Manipulation,” in 2009 9th IEEE Int. Work. Conf. Source Code Anal. Manip., 2009, pp. 168–177.
 Y. Yano, R. G. Kula, T. Ishio, and K. Inoue, “VerXCombo: An Interactive Data Visualization of Popular Library Version
Combinations,” in 23rd Int. Conf. Progr. Compr., 2015, pp. 291–294.
 F. Petrillo, G. Lacerda, M. Pimenta, and C. Freitas, “Visualizing inter- active and shared debugging sessions,” in 3rd
IEEE Work. Conf. Softw. Vis., 2015, pp. 140–144.
 T. Khan, H. Barthel, A. Ebert, and P. Liggesmeyer, “Visual analytics of software structure and metrics,” in 3rd IEEE
Work. Conf. Softw. Vis., 2015, pp. 16–25.
 M. R. Berthold, N. Cebron, F. Dill, T. R. Gabriel, T. Kötter, T. Meinl, P. Ohl, K. Thiel, and B. Wiswedel, “KNIME - the
Konstanz information miner,” ACM SIGKDD Explor. Newsl., vol. 11, no. 1, p. 26, 2009.
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14. THANK YOU.
Richard Müller, Dirk Mahler, Michael Hunger, Jens Nerche, Markus Harrer
rmueller@wifa.uni-leipzig.de
@rimllr
https://github.com/softvis-research
http://softvis.wifa.uni-leipzig.de
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