CuboidMatrix: Exploring Dynamic Structural Connections in Software Components Using Space-Time Cube

Abstract

Static and dynamic evolution of software systems may be described in terms of connection additions and removals in a graph. Due to the inherent complexity of software, navigating through such a dynamic network is a non-trivial task and extracting relevant information typically involves sophisticated queries. We explore the notion of space-time cube, a well-known 3D representation of an evolving dynamic graph, to support a set of software engineering activities. CuboidMatrix is a visualization tool that offers simple and expressive navigation operations. We have evaluated our tool against two software comprehension activities, namely (i) assessing interaction of classes during a software execution and (ii) exploring the cause of breaking Lint-like quality rules over a large number of software revisions.