Browsing and Searching Software Architectures

Software architecture visualization tools tend to support browsing, that is, exploration by following concepts. If architectural diagrams are to be used during daily software maintenance tasks, these tools also need to support specific fact-finding through searching. Searching is essential to program comprehension and hypothesis testing. Furthermore, searching allows users to reverse the ions in architectural diagrams and access facts in the underlying program code. In this paper, we consider the problem of searching and browsing software architectures using perspectives from information retrieval and program comprehension. After analyzing our own user studies and results from the literature, we propose a solution: the Searchable Bookshelf, an architecture visualization tool that supports both navigation styles. We also present a prototype of our tool which is an extension of an existing architecture visualization tool. KEYWORDS software architecture, information retrieval, program co...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ICSM
• Authors: Susan Elliott Sim, Charles L. A. Clarke, Richard C. Holt, Anthony Cox
• Keywords: Architecture Visualization Tool, ICSM 1999, Program Comprehension, Software Architecture, Software Engineering