A visual strategy of analysis defines how the evolution is visually presented for analysis (Novais and Mendonça, 2013 AU44: The citation "Novais and Mendonça, 2013" matches the reference "Novais, Mendonca, 2013", but an accent or apostrophe is different. )( Novais et al., 2013a ). Due to the diverse set of software evolution comprehension tasks, it is desirable that SEV infrastructures support different strategies of analysis. There are differential and temporal strategies. Differential strategies (relative and absolute) focus on analyzing the differences between versions, while temporal strategies (overview, snapshot, and overview accumulative) describe several versions on the same visual scene.
Published in Chapter:
Software Evolution Visualization: Status, Challenges, and Research Directions
Renato Lima Novais (Federal Institute of Bahia, Brazil) and Manoel Gomes de Mendonça Neto (Fraunhofer Project Center for Software and Systems Engineering at UFBA, Brazil)
Copyright: © 2014
|Pages: 14
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6026-7.ch026
Abstract
Software Visualization is the field of Software Engineering that aims to help people to understand software through the use of visual resources. It can be effectively used to analyze and understand the large amount of data produced during software evolution. Several Software Evolution Visualization (SEV) approaches have been proposed. The goals of the proposed approaches are varied, and they try to help programmers and managers to deal with software evolution in their daily software activities. Despite their goals, their applicability in real development scenarios is questionable. In this chapter, the authors discuss the current state of the art and challenges in software evolution visualization, presenting issues and problems related to the area, and they propose some solutions and recommendations to circumvent them. Finally, the authors discuss some research directions for the SEV domain.