A Layered Software City for Dependency Visualization

Veronika Dashuber, Michael Philippsen, Johannes Weigend

2021

Abstract

A Software City is a an established way to visualize metrics such as the test coverage or complexity. As current layouting algorithms are mainly based on the static code structure (e.g., classes and packages), dependencies that are orthogonal to this structure often clutter the visualization and are hard to grasp. This paper applies layered graph drawing to layout a Software City in 3D. The proposed layout takes both the dependencies and the static code structure into account. This minimizes the number of explicitly displayed dependencies. The resulting lower cognitive load makes the software architecture easier to understand. We evaluate the advantages of our layout over a classic layouting algorithm in a controlled study on a real world project.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Dashuber V., Philippsen M. and Weigend J. (2021). A Layered Software City for Dependency Visualization. In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 3: IVAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-488-6, SciTePress, pages 15-26. DOI: 10.5220/0010180200150026

in Bibtex Style

@conference{ivapp21,
author={Veronika Dashuber and Michael Philippsen and Johannes Weigend},
title={A Layered Software City for Dependency Visualization},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 3: IVAPP},
year={2021},
pages={15-26},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010180200150026},
isbn={978-989-758-488-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 3: IVAPP
TI - A Layered Software City for Dependency Visualization
SN - 978-989-758-488-6
AU - Dashuber V.
AU - Philippsen M.
AU - Weigend J.
PY - 2021
SP - 15
EP - 26
DO - 10.5220/0010180200150026
PB - SciTePress