Interactive Visualization of Large Structured Development Environment

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Interactive Visualization of Large Structured
Development Environment

• Project Update Nov 16 2005
• By Anirban Sinha (Ani)

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Problem

• Large software projects can get really
  complicated specially when large number of
  modules are added integrated together.
• It would be really helpful if we can develop a
  tool to visualize structures method call
  sequences within the source codes using
  interactive trees.

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Proposed Solution Original Plan

• Use Prefuse Infovis toolkit to visualize program
  structures written in C as graphical models add
  interactions.
• To compensate for large complicated graphical
  structures for large projects, we add zooming
  panning facilities.
• For static analysis of code, I originally planned
  to use my previously designed code parser add
  some modifications to it when required.

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Progress so far

• Configured Prefuse to work in eclipse.
• Front end structure has been designed to load a
  file display graphical visualization.

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Snapshots
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Snapshot Continued
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A look at milestones
Week 1 (10 HRS) Establish familiarity with the Prefuse Toolkit.  ?
Week 2 (15 HRS) Try out the animated graph with a dummy adjacency matrix ?
Possibly miscalculated/unanticipated milestones??
True. it definitely needs revision.
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Challenges So far/Diversions from Original
Proposal

• Soon, realization dawned in that designing a
  static analyzer for C source code is in itself a
  large project.
• Started looking for open source (so that I could
  tweak port them with Prefuse), possibly cross
  platform eclipse configurable analyzers.
• Did not get any effective tools that analyze C
  codes, but got one that analyses exception flow
  control in Java codes - Jex.

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Jex - A Tool for Analyzing Exception Flow in Java
Programs http//www.cs.ubc.ca/mrobilla/jex/

• Originally designed by Martin P. Robillard during
  his masters research _at_ UBC. He is currently a
  faculty at McGill.
• Analyzes the flow of exceptions in Java programs.
• Is open source, written in Java eclipse
  configurable.
• Produces analysis results in text files which can
  be visualized.

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Current Work/Future Directions

• Currently working on to run Jex on UNIX system
  run it on a sample java file observe its output
  (having some CLASSPATH error).
• Future work will mostly be concerned with
  tweaking Jex to produce output file compatible
  with Prefuse tweaking Prefuse toolkit to bring
  about effective visualization of the exception
  flow structure.
• Need to talk to Chris and/or Gail Murphy for
  further insights.

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References consulted so far

• Prawn An Interactive Tool for Software
  Visualization, Andrew Chan, Reid Holmes.
• Pathfinder exposing the mental map of program
  navigation , Mik Kersten (beatmik-at-acm.org), CS
  533C Visualization Project, March 1 2004.
• Martin Robillard (martin_at_cs.mcgill.ca).
• The Aristotle Project http//www.cc.gatech.edu/ari
  stotle (got this reference from Martin).