Abstract

Software visualization is a significant force in software engineering. As the sizes of software systems are becoming larger and more complex, program comprehension is becoming more difficult. The tasks of program comprehension involve implementation, maintenance, testing, debugging, mental model construction and verification. Software visualization is one promised way to support the tasks of program comprehension. Through software visualization, graphics and animations are built to help illustrate and present the computer program. In recent years, many related visualization techniques have been developed and used to build visualization tools. The major goal of visualization tools is to support program comprehension.