The document discusses software visualization (SV), which leverages human cognitive skills to gain insights from complex data visualizations. It addresses the challenges of representing intangible software systems graphically, aiming to improve developers' understanding and problem-solving abilities. Various visualization techniques and their effectiveness in supporting developers are analyzed, along with their applications across different problem domains.

1. Towards Actionable
Visualisation in Software
Development
Leonel Merino
Mohammad Ghafari
Oscar Nierstrasz
Software Composition Group
University of Bern
merino@inf.unibe.ch @leonel_merino

2. “SV takes advantage of human cognitive skills
to discover unstructured insights from the
visual presentations of complex and voluminous
data” [Basit’15].
“SV is broadly concerned with the challenge of
representing software systems, which are
notoriously intangible, in graphical terms that
provide insight to a developer” [Scarle’15].
Software Visualisation
2

3. “SV takes advantage of human cognitive skills
to discover unstructured insights from the
visual presentations of complex and voluminous
data” [Basit’15].
“SV is broadly concerned with the challenge of
representing software systems, which are
notoriously intangible, in graphical terms that
provide insight to a developer” [Scarle’15].
Software Visualisation
3

4. “SV takes advantage of human cognitive skills
to discover unstructured insights from the
visual presentations of complex and voluminous
data” [Basit’15].
“SV is broadly concerned with the challenge of
representing software systems, which are
notoriously intangible, in graphical terms that
provide insight to a developer” [Scarle’15].
Software Visualisation
4

5. “SV takes advantage of human cognitive skills
to discover unstructured insights from the
visual presentations of complex and voluminous
data” [Basit’15].
“SV is broadly concerned with the challenge of
representing software systems, which are
notoriously intangible, in graphical terms that
provide insight to a developer” [Scarle’15].
Software Visualisation
5

6. “SV takes advantage of human cognitive skills
to discover unstructured insights from the
visual presentations of complex and voluminous
data” [Basit’15].
“SV is broadly concerned with the challenge of
representing software systems, which are
notoriously intangible, in graphical terms that
provide insight to a developer” [Scarle’15].
Software Visualisation
6

7. “SV takes advantage of human cognitive skills
to discover unstructured insights from the
visual presentations of complex and voluminous
data” [Basit’15].
“SV is broadly concerned with the challenge of
representing software systems, which are
notoriously intangible, in graphical terms that
provide insight to a developer” [Scarle’15].
Software Visualisation
7

8. Many Success Stories
8
SourceVis [Anslow’13]
[Maletic’13]
MosaicCode
[Adam’10]FlyBy
[de Pauw’10]Zinsigh

9. RQ1. What are the characteristics of visualisation
techniques that support developers needs?
9

10. RQ2. How well are various problem domains
supported by visualisation?
10

11. 31
46 46
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Design study Technique Systems Model Formalism
# studies
VISSOFT (176) SOFTVIS (97)
11

12. 31
46 46
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21
34
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14
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18
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30
35
40
45
50
Design study Technique Systems Model Formalism
# studies
VISSOFT (176) SOFTVIS (97)
12

13. 20 20 20
23
41
28
33
13
34
14
32
25
31
7
2
8
1
5
2
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1
10
4
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SOFTVIS '03
VISSOFT '03
SOFTVIS '05
VISSOFT '05
SOFTVIS '06
VISSOFT '07
SOFTVIS '08
VISSOFT '09
SOFTVIS '10
VISSOFT '11
VISSOFT '13
VISSOFT '14
VISSOFT '15
# studies
Total Included Poly. (Total) Poly. (Included)
13

14. scg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review
Selected
Selected
Selectedde Pauw, W.de Pauw, W.de Pauw, W.
14

15. scg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review
Selected
Maletic, J.I.Maletic, J.I.Maletic, J.I.
15

16. scg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review
Selected
Selected
Sahraoui, H.Sahraoui, H.Sahraoui, H.
16

17. scg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
17

18. Selected
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Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
an Author
a Paper
a Selected Paper
Authorship
Height number of pages
Publication Year in SOFTVIS
Publication Year in VISSOFT
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
Parnin, C.
Sahraoui, H.
Lanza, M.
de Pauw, W.
Fittkau, F.
Maletic, J.I.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
Parnin, C.
Sahraoui, H.
Lanza, M.
de Pauw, W.
Fittkau, F.
Maletic, J.I.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
Parnin, C.
Sahraoui, H.
Lanza, M.
Bohnet, J.
de Pauw, W.
Fittkau, F.
Maletic, J.I.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
scg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review 18

19. Selected
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Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Selected
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
an Author
a Paper
a Selected Paper
Authorship
Height number of pages
Publication Year in SOFTVIS
Publication Year in VISSOFT
Lanza, M.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
Parnin, C.
Sahraoui, H.
Lanza, M.
de Pauw, W.
Fittkau, F.
Maletic, J.I.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
Parnin, C.
Sahraoui, H.
Lanza, M.
de Pauw, W.
Fittkau, F.
Maletic, J.I.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
Parnin, C.
Sahraoui, H.
Lanza, M.
Bohnet, J.
de Pauw, W.
Fittkau, F.
Maletic, J.I.
Beck, F.
Noble, J.
Jones, J.A.
Reiss, S.P.
Telea, A.
scg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review 19

20. Extracted Data
e.g., lviz
e.g., maintenance
e.g., wall display
e.g., dense pixel
e.g., QA Engineer
e.g., source code
20

21. Extracted Data
21
e.g., how are clones distributed in
system structure?

22. e.g., refactoring

23. 23
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
SOFTVIS'03
SOFTVIS'05
SOFTVIS'06
SOFTVIS'08
SOFTVIS'10
VISSOFT'03
VISSOFT'05
VISSOFT'07
VISSOFT'09
VISSOFT'11
VISSOFT'13
VISSOFT'14
VISSOFT'15
Debugging Programming Reverse Engineering
Maintenance SoFware Process Management TesHng

24. 75%
25%
Goal
e.g., “to get a better insight into the
control flow inside a program”
Question
e.g., “what is the software doing when performance issues arise?”
24

25. 25

26. 0 5 10 15 20 25
Running System
Source Code
Version Control System
Documenta:on
Changes
Spreadsheets
26

27. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Java
C
C++
C#
Smalltalk
VB
Pascal
0 5 10 15 20 25
Running System
Source Code
Version Control System
Documenta:on
Changes
Spreadsheets
27

28. IconicStacked
Geometrically-Transformed Dense Pixel
28

29. 29

30. 80% Not
identified
30

31. 80% Not identified
10% Standard
31

32. 80% Not identified
4% Wall display
10% Standard
32

33. 80% Not identified
10% Standard
4% Wall display
2% Projection screens
2% Multi-touch tables
2% Immersive 3D environment
33

35. D3
OpenCloud
MT4j
JFreeChart

36. OpenGL
GLUT
Globsym
wxWidgets
Extractor
D3
OpenCloud
C++
VR Juggler
Roassal
Eclipse Visualization Toolkit (Zest) wxWindows
MT4j
FTGL
FreeType
Viewer
abego TreeLayout
JFreeChart
36

37. NetBeans Visual Library.Java 8
Java
Control FX
Java3D
Java FX
C++
Graphisto ToolkitOpenJDK 1.6.0 18 (64bit)
TreeMap Java Library
GraphStream
Java 6
abego TreeLayout
yFiles library
Qt
un
Swing
37

38. OpenGL
NetBeans Visual Library.
GLUT
Java 8
Stencil visualization environment
Prefuse toolkit
Java
Globsym
Control FX
wxWidgets
Extractor
Java3D
D3
OpenCloud
Java FX
C++
VR Juggler
G4P
dot
Roassal
Eclipse Visualization Toolkit (Zest)
Graphisto ToolkitOpenJDK 1.6.0 18 (64bit)
wxWindows
TreeMap Java Library
GraphStream
Java 6
MT4j
GraphViz
Palantir
FTGL
FreeType
Viewer
abego TreeLayout
Trevis
yFiles library
Qt
jMonkeyEngine
JFreeChart
CCJun
Swing
38

39. -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25
Ra)onale
Intent and implementa)on
Debugging
Refactoring
Implica)ons
History
Implemen)ng
Tes)ng
Contracts
Control flow
Type rela)onships
Data flow
Performance
Policies
Loca)on
Teammates
Architecture
Building and branching
Concurrency
Method proper)es
Dependencies
visualisa)on proposed
developer needs

40. Call-to-Action
40

41. Future Work
Software
Visualization

42. Future Work
Software
Visualization

44. Summary
merino@inf.unibe.ch @leonel_merinoscg.unibe.ch/research/visualisation-review