Authors:
Ivan Bacher
1
;
Brian Mac Namee
2
and
John Kelleher
1
Affiliations:
1
Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
;
2
University College Dublin, Ireland
Keyword(s):
Software Visualisation, Dense Pixel Representation, Review, Code-Map Metaphor, SeeSoft.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Abstract Data Visualization
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Software Visualization
Abstract:
Software developers can use software visualisations employing the code-map metaphor to discover and correlate
facts spread over a large code base. This work presents an extensive review of the use of the code-map
metaphor for software visualisation. The review analyses a set of 29 publications, which together describe 21
software development tools that use visualisations employing the code-map metaphor. The review follows a
task oriented framework to guide the analysis of the literature in terms of the task, audience, target, medium,
representation, and evidence dimensions based on the code- map metaphor. Although the literature indicates
that software visualisations based on the code-map metaphor are perceived by the research community to be
helpful across all aspects of the software develop process, the main finding of our review is that there is a lack
of quantitative evidence to support this perception. Thus, the effectiveness of visualisations incorporating the
code-map
metaphor is still unclear. The majority of the software visualisations analysed in this study, however,
do provide qualitative observations regarding their usage in various scenarios. These are summarised
and presented in this review as we believe the observations can be used as motivation for future empirical
evaluations.
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