Visualizing Evolving Software Cities
Federico Pfahler, Roberto Minelli, Csaba Nagy, Michele Lanza
Abstract
Visualization approaches that leverage a 3D city metaphor have become popular. Numerous variations, including virtual and augmented reality have emerged. Despite its popularity, the city metaphor falls short when depicting the evolution of a system, which results in buildings and districts moving around in unpredictable ways. We present a novel approach to visualize software systems as evolving cities that treats evolution as a first-class concept. It renders with fidelity not only changes but also refactorings in a comprehensive way. To do so, we developed custom ways to traverse time. We implemented our approach in a publicly accessible web-based platform named m3triCity.
Topics & Concepts
Leverage (statistics)TraverseComputer sciencePopularityMetaphorSoftwareVisualizationSoftware evolutionSoftware visualizationFidelityData scienceVirtual realityAugmented realityRendering (computer graphics)Human–computer interactionWorld Wide WebSoftware engineeringSoftware systemComputer graphics (images)Artificial intelligenceComponent-based software engineeringSoftware constructionGeographyCartographyProgramming languageLinguisticsPsychologySocial psychologyPhilosophyTelecommunicationsSoftware Engineering ResearchData Visualization and AnalyticsAdvanced Software Engineering Methodologies