A survey and evaluation of tool features for understanding reverse‐engineered sequence diagrams

Abstract

Abstract Sequence diagrams can be valuable aids to software understanding. However, they can be extremely large and hard to understand in spite of using modern tool support. Consequently, providing the right set of tool features is important if the tools are to help rather than hinder the user. This paper surveys research and commercial sequence diagram tools to determine the features they provide to support program understanding. Although there has been significant effort in developing these tools, many of them have not been evaluated using human subjects. To begin to address this gap, a preliminary study was performed with a specially designed sequence diagram tool that implements the features found during the survey. On the basis of an analysis of the study results, we discuss the features that were found to be useful and relate these to the tasks performed. It concludes by proposing how future tools can be improved to better support the exploration of large sequence diagrams. Copyright © 2008 Crown in the right of Canada. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.