Patrools: Visualizing the Polymorphic Usage of Class Hierarchies

Abstract

Class hierarchies are key to flexible object-oriented design, but can also burden program comprehension activities when improperly designed or documented. This tool demo presents an Eclipse plug in called PATROOLS. It implements two software visualizations that capture the polymorphic usage of a class hierarchy by its clients, and can support understanding and quality assessment tasks related to class hierarchies.