Polymetric views - A lightweight visual approach to reverse engineering

TLDR

Reverse engineering large, complex software systems is a major industry concern due to their size, complexity, and value to owners and maintainers. The article introduces polymetric views, a lightweight visualization technique that incorporates software metrics. The authors implemented polymetric views in CodeCrawler, discussed their benefits and limits, and developed a methodology using clustered views to guide engineers in early reverse engineering stages. Polymetric views aid early structural understanding and problem detection, and the refined methodology has been validated on industrial systems and demonstrated in a case study.

Abstract

Reverse engineering software systems has become a major concern in software industry because of their sheer size and complexity. This problem needs to be tackled since the systems in question are of considerable worth to their owners and maintainers. In this article, we present the concept of a polymetric view, a lightweight software visualization technique enriched with software metrics information. Polymetric views help to understand the structure and detect problems of a software system in the initial phases of a reverse engineering process. We discuss the benefits and limits of several predefined polymetric views we have implemented in our tool CodeCrawler. Moreover, based on clusters of different polymetric views, we have developed a methodology which supports and guides a software engineer in the first phases of a reverse engineering of a large software system. We have refined this methodology by repeatedly applying it on industrial systems and illustrate it by applying a selection of polymetric views to a case study.