Visualizing Traceability Links between Source Code and Documentation
Date
2012
Authors
Chen, Xiaofan
Hosking, John
Grundy, John
Journal Title
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Volume Title
Publisher
IEEE Computer Society
Abstract
It is well recognized that visualizing traceability links between software artifacts helps developers to recover, browse, and maintain these inter-relationships effectively and efficiently. However, it is a major challenge for researchers to efficiently visualize traceability links for big software systems because of scalability and visual clutter issues. In this paper we present a new approach that combines treemap and hierarchical tree visualization techniques to provide a global structure of traces and a detailed overview of each trace. These both reduce visual clutter while still being highly scalable and interactive. Our usability study shows that our approach can support comprehension, browsing, and maintenance of traceability links.
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Keywords
Keywords: Global structure; Hierarchical tree; Inter-relationships; Software artifacts; Software systems; Software traceability; Source codes; Traceability links; Treemap; Usability studies; Visual clutter; Clutter (information theory); Visual languages; Forestry; Hierarchical tree; Software traceability; Traceability visualization; Treemap
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Source
2012 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)
Type
Conference paper
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Restricted until
2037-12-31
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