Understanding software evolution using a combination of software visualization and software metrics

Abstract

Coping with huge amounts of data is one of the major problems in the context of software evolution. Current approaches reduce this complexity by filtering out irrelevant information. In this paper we propose an approach based on a combination of software visualization and software metrics, as software visualization is apt for complexity reduction and metrics introduce the possibility to qualify evolution. We discuss a simple and effective way to visualize the evolution of software systems which helps to recover the evolution of object oriented software systems. In addition we define a vocabulary that qualifies some specific situations that occurs when considering system evolution.