Karl S. Mathias

The role of software measures and metrics in studies of program comprehension

Many studies have been conducted into how programmers comprehend software. Models based on these studies have pointed to top-down, bottom-up, and mixed models for describing the comprehension process. In most of these studies, however, a key element of the experiment is largely ignored: the underlying nature of the software being examined by the programmers. This paper discusses software measurements and metrics that must be considered as factors when conducting comprehension

Scalable visualizations to support reverse engineering: a framework for evaluation

Visualizations of software can be utilized in varying degrees throughout the software development cycle as aids to comprehension, analysis, and measurement. This research focuses on the experimental evaluation and refinement of a set of scalable visualizations that show promise for improving the overall software process. The roles which visualizations may play during reverse engineering and maintenance are of particular interest. This research also investigates the manner in which software visualizations are used in practice by software professionals. Partners from government and industry have agreed to participate by providing access to appropriate production software. This paper will describe a framework for evaluating visual techniques and investigating their practical use and application.

Tool support for reverse engineering multi-lingual software

Multi-lingual software systems are those in which the component modules are implemented in multiple languages. Reverse engineering such systems raises several issues, particularly with regard to providing automated tool support for the process. GRASP is a prototype software engineering tool designed to provide visualization of software control structure, complexity, and architecture. The paper describes GRASP and its use in reverse engineering multi-lingual software systems.

Visual support for incremental abstraction and refinement in Ada 95

1. ABSTRACT GRASP is a software engineering tool which uniquely combines a source code diagramming technique, the control structure diagram (CSD), with other comprehension aids such as complexity visualization, syntax coloring and source code folding. The synergistic combination of these features in GRASP has the potential to be a powerful aid in any activity where source code is expected to be read. The primary focus of GRASP is to improve the comprehension efficiency of software and, as a result, improve reliability and reduce costs during design, implementation, testing, maintenance and reengineering.

Software visualization and measurement in software engineering education: an experience report

By supporting well-defined cognitive processes employed during a comprehension task, graphical representations of software could have a beneficial effect on comprehension efficiency and effectiveness. Documented empirical evidence of measurable benefits of software visualization is, however, limited in scope and often contradictory. The GRASP research project is currently evaluating the effects of software visualizations in both software engineering education as well as in software production environments. This paper describes the experimental framework and design used for evaluation in an academic setting.

Providing enhanced visual support for software development and maintenance

GRASP is a robust software engineering tool that has been enhanced and improved to production quality through several earlier prototypes. The primary emphasis of the tool is on providing automatic visualization of software control structure and complexity to support development, maintenance, reverse engineering, and reengineering. GRASP has the potential to be a valuable point tool in any environment where source code is expected to be either written or read. GRASP has been extended to multiple languages such as C, C++, Java, Ada 95, and VHDL.. This paper describes the unique features of GRASP, its intended uses, and discusses promising avenues

Visualization of control structure and complexity in Ada 95

GRASP is an evolving prototype software engineering tool designed to automatically produce visualizations of both control structure and complexity of Ada 95 source code. Control structure is visualized as a Control Structure Diagram and complexity is visualized as a Complexity Profile Graph. nese visualizations use intuitive, compact graphical representations that allow the software engineer to holistically visualize the overall program as well as the details of a small section of code. The primary goal of GRASP is to use its visualizations to increase the comprehension efficiency of software, thus decreasing software costs. This paper discusses the current features and enhancements as well as the availability of GRASP. Introduction Software visualization is an active area of research that investigates efficient and effective ways of automatically producing graphical representations of program source code, algorithms, or the runtime behavior of software. Such visualization technology promises to bring considerable help to bearon difficult and costly issuesinsofiwareengineeringsuchas communicating program information for the purposes of design, implementation, testing, maintenance, and reverse engineering HI. As part of the ongoing GRASP (Graphical Representations of Algorithms, Structures, and Processes) project at Auburn University, we have developed a software engineering tool, also called GRASP, that automatically produces visualizations of control structure and complexity in Ada 95 source code in a manner flexible and efficient enough for professional application [2]. Preliminary empirical studies indicate the usefulness of the CSD and the practical potential for tools such as GRASP. Despite the potential promise of visualizations such as the CSD, there is considerable evidence that the effectiveness of visualizations is quite sensitive to issues such as the user’s skill level (the ability of a user to interpret a given visualization) and the manner in which the visualization is produced (the suitability of a given visualization to be correctly interpreted) [3]. Recognizing these facts, we have enhanced the GRASP software visualization tool to incorporate significant features with the intent of making the resulting visualizations more useful. The remainder of this paper describes these enhancements. Pen&sion to make digit&hard copies of all or part of this work for t~~~oaol or ctnssroom use is pnted without fee provided that copies are not mdc or distributed for protit or commercirl advanbge, the copyright no&, tile tile of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given thnt copying is by permission of ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to Iists, requires prior spccificpcnnissionMdrornfee 01997 ACM O-89791-981-5/97/001 3.50 135 Visualization of Control Structure GRASP is a continually evolving prototype software engineering tool. The emphasis of the tool to this point has been on visualizing program structure via the automatic generation of control structure diagrams (CSDs) from Ada 95 source code to support development, maintenance, reverse engineering, and

GRASP: software engineering with Ada 95 for Windows 95 and NT

GRASP is a prototype software visualization and development tool currently being used both in industry and in computer science curricula. GRASP is freely available for Solaris, Linux, Windows 95, and Windows NT. This paper describes the Windows version of GRASP along with its primary visualization, the Control Structure Diagram.

A visualization and measurement environment for software engineering

Work is reported on the development and enhancement of the GRASP software engineering and visualization tool. GRASP automatically produces visualizations of control and complexity (control structure diagrams and complexity profile graphs, respectively) of source code written in Ada 95, C, and Java. These visualizations use intuitive, compact graphical representations that allow the software engineer to holistically visualize the overall program as well as visualize the details of a small section of the code. Current features and enhancements of GRASP as well as its availability are discussed.