The evolution radar: visualizing integrated logical coupling information

In software evolution research logical coupling has extensively been used to recover the hidden dependencies between source code artifacts. They would otherwise go lost because of the file-based nature of current versioning systems. Previous research has dealt with low-level couplings between files, leading to an explosion of data alyzed, or has abstracted the logical couplings to module level, leading to a loss of detailed information. In this paper we propose a visualization-based approach which integrates both filelevel and module-level logical coupling information. This not only facilitates an in-depth analysis of the logical couplings at all granularity levels, it also leads to a precise characterization of the system modules in terms of their logical coupling dependencies. Categories and Subject Descriptors D.2.7 [Software Engineering]: Maintenance, Version Control, Reengineering, Reverse Engineering General Terms Measurements, Design Keywords Evolution, Logical Coupling, Vis...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: MSR
• Authors: Marco D'Ambros, Michele Lanza, Mircea Lungu
• Keywords: Logical Coupling, Module-level Logical Coupling, MSR 2006, Research Logical Coupling