Visualizing Software - A Key Research Area

Abstract

The visualisation of software systems has long been investigated, primarily through the use of graph structures representing at most a couple of aspects of the system under consideration. It has been claimed that such visualisation cannot be successful because of the size and complexity of software; this is true of purely graph displays. This position paper makes the case for three-dimensional visualisations that try to overcome these problems and then poses the question that if these visualisations are successful is it not then true to say that software visualisation has the ability to be both successful and a useful tool.