Leveraging Visio for Adoption-Centric Reverse Engineering Tools

There are many reasons why reverse engineering research tools often fail to be evaluated or adopted in industry. Their rough user interfaces and poor interoperability are just two frequently mentioned issues. The aim of the ACSE (Adoption-Centric Software Engineering) project, conducted at the University of Victoria, is to investigate how some of these impediments can be overcome by building software engineering tools on top of Commercial OffThe-Shelf (COTS) products. This paper outlines how to leverage Microsoft Visio for a software visualization and metrics tool. Software developers familiar with Visio only have to learn the reverse engineering specific functions introduced by our tools and can take advantage of their existing, domain-independent Visio knowledge. Thus, compared to a stand-alone application, this Visio-based tool leverages the cognitive support previously acquired by developers using Visio.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: WCRE
• Authors: Qin Zhu, Yu Chen, Piotr Kaminski, Anke Weber, Holger M. Kienle, Hausi A. Müller
• Keywords: Leverage Microsoft Visio, Reverse Engineering, Visio, WCRE 2003