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Lanza_2024_IEEE_SANER
Conference paper (in proceedings)

Immersive software archaeology : exploring software architecture and design in virtual reality

  • 2024
Published in:
  • 2024 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER). - 2024, p. 47-51
Software visualization
Software architecture visualization
Software comprehension
Software re-engineering
English Comprehending large-scale software systems is a challenging and daunting task, particularly when only source code is available. While software visualization attempts to aid that process, existing tools primarily visualize a system's structure in terms of files, folders, packages, or namespaces, neglecting its logical decomposition into cohesive architectural components. We present the tool Immersive Software Archaeology (ISA) which (i) estimates a view of a system's architecture by utilizing concepts from software architecture recovery and (ii) visualizes the results in virtual reality (VR) so that users can explore a subject system interactively, making the process more engaging. In VR, a semantic zoom lets users gradually transition between architectural components of different granularity and class-level elements while relationship graphs let users navigate along connections across classes and architectural components. We present results from a controlled experiment with 54 participants to investigate the usefulness of ISA for assisting engineers with exploring an unfamiliar large-scale system compared to another state-of-the-art VR approach and an IDE.
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Language
  • English
Classification
Computer science and technology
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Video Demonstration

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Open access status
green
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https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1329559
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