Software visualization tools: survey and analysis

Abstract

Recently, many software visualization (SV) techniques and tools have become available. There is ample anecdotal evidence that appropriate visualization can significantly reduce the effort spent on system comprehension and maintenance, yet we are not aware of any quantitative investigation and survey of SV tools. This paper reports on a survey on SV tools which was conducted in spring 2000 with more than 100 participants. It addresses various functional, practical, cognitive as well as code analysis aspects that users may be looking for in SV tools. The participants of the survey rated the usefulness and importance of these aspects, and came up with aspects of their own. The participants were in general quite pleased with the SV tool they were using and mentioned various benefits. Nevertheless, a big gap between desired aspects and the features of current SV tools was identified. In addition, a list of improvements that should be done to current tools was assembled. Finally, the collected data tends to suggest that in general code analysis aspects were not highly supported by the tools.