Visualizing Architectural Evolution

Authors: James P. D. Keast Mark G. Adams

Venue: ICSE   ICSE-99 Workshop on Software Change and Evolution (SCE-99) , 1999

Year: 1999

Abstract: Traditionally, the structure of large software systems has been viewed from two orthogonal perspectives: the snapshot view", which shows the architecture of a single version of a software system, its components, and their interdependencies, and the evolutionary view", which shows how individual components (typically, sourceles) have changed over time [5]. In this paper we describe some of our experiences in merging these two points of view. In particular, we describe how we model the evolution of large-scale architectural components of a system. We observe the change in a system's architecture by extracting and visualizing the relationship s that have c hanged as a result of the evolution. Our approach was applied to three non-trivial programs as test cases: gmake, grep, and wget. W e discuss our approach, our results and observations in one of these case studies, as well as plans for future work which includes the examination of multiple versions at the same time.

BibTeX:

@inproceedings{jamesp.d.keast1999vae,
    author = "James P. D. Keast and Mark G. Adams",
    title = "Visualizing Architectural Evolution",
    year = "1999",
    booktitle = "Proc. of ICSE-99 Workshop on Software Change and Evolution (SCE-99)
        "
}

Plain Text:

James P. D. Keast and Mark G. Adams, "Visualizing Architectural Evolution," ICSE-99 Workshop on Software Change and Evolution (SCE-99)