CorpusVis – Visualizing Software Metrics at Scale

Abstract

We do not know fully understand how software violates metrics based principles, particularly in large systems. Systems are restricted by structural and static deficiencies that we can aim to reduce by providing developers with effective visualizations of their code. We developed CorpusVis a widget-based application to explore software metrics of Java software systems from the Qualitas Corpus. Through an evaluation of the visualization techniques we identified what visualizations were effective and which ones did not scale well for large software systems. Our application helps to reduce the structural and static deficiencies in developers code which enables developers to spend less time maintaining legacy systems and learn to develop more effective code for future systems.