DiffArchViz: A Tool to Visualize Correspondence Between Multiple Representations of a Software Architecture

Abstract

This paper describes a technique to visualize the software architecture of the Network Appliance Data ONTAPreg7G (ONTAP) storage server operating system. We integrate the Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) algorithm into a visualization technique for converting raw source code into patterns that capture the software architecture. Individual components are drawn using graphical "glyphs" that vary their spatial position, color, and texture properties to encode each component's attribute values. The result is a display that can be used by viewers to rapidly and accurately analyze, explore, compare, and discover within the software architecture. We show how our visualization tool, known as DiffArchViz, can be used to study different architectural views representing multiple attributes of the software components. We also present a technique to visualize dynamic software architecture by examining the correspondence between multiple runtime profiles for a few storage server performance benchmarks. We apply our technique to multiple hardware platforms and versions of ONTAP.