Adding Control-Flow to a Visual Data-Flow Representation

Previous studies have shown that novices do not tend to extract or use data-flow information during program comprehension. However, for impact analysis and similar tasks, data-flow information is necessary and highly relevant. Visual data-flow programming languages, such as Prograph/CPX, have been commercially successful, suggesting that they provide effective data-flow representations. To explore data-flow representations for program comprehension, we augment Prograph data-flow programs with control-flow features to determine the effects on comprehension. We hypothesize that combined control/data-flow representations will aide comprehension better than data-flow alone. To validate this hypothesis, we present the results of an experiment comparing three combined representations against a data-flow only representation. While the addition of control-flow was found to be beneficial, the complexity of the representations plays an important role. Complex and highly detailed con...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: IWPC
• Authors: David Dearman, Anthony Cox, Maryanne Fisher
• Keywords: Data-flow Representations, Effective Data-flow Representations, IWPC 2005, Program Comprehension, Software Engineering