Software visualization tools and techniques: A systematic review of the literature

Abstract

Comprehension is one fundamental process in the software life cycle. Although necessary, this comprehension is difficult to obtain due to amount and complexity of information related to software. Thus, software visualization techniques and tools have been proposed to facilitate the comprehension process and to reduce maintenance costs. This paper shows the results from a Literature Systematic Review to identify software visualization techniques and tools. We analyzed 52 papers and we identified 28 techniques and 33 tools for software visualization. Among these techniques, 71% have been implemented and available to users, 48% use 3D visualization and 80% are generated using static analysis.