An Interactive Approach for Inspecting Software System Measurements

Abstract

In recent times, visual analysis has become increasingly important, especially in the area of software measurement, as most of the data from software measurement is multivariate. In this regard, standard software analysis tools are limited by their lack of ability to process huge collections of multidimensional data sets; current tools are designed to either support only well-known metrics or are too complicated to use for generating custom software metrics. Furthermore, the analyst requires extensive knowledge of the underlying data schemas and the relevant querying language. To address these shortcomings, we propose an interactive visual approach that focuses on visual elements, their configurations, and interconnectivity rather than a data ontology and querying language. In order to test and validate our methodology, we developed a prototype tool called VIMETRIK (Visual Specification of Metrics). Our preliminary evaluation study illustrates the intuitiveness and ease-of-use of our approach to understand software measurement and analysis data.