Title :
The SEXTANT Software Exploration Tool
Author :
Schafer, Thorsten ; Eichberg, Michael ; Haupt, Michael ; Mezini, Mira
Author_Institution :
Software Technol. Group, Darmstadt Univ. of Technol.
Abstract :
In this paper, we discuss a set of functional requirements for software exploration tools and provide initial evidence that various combinations of these features are needed to effectively assist developers in understanding software. We observe that current tools for software exploration only partly support these features. This has motivated the development of SEXTANT, a software exploration tool tightly integrated into the Eclipse IDE that has been developed to fill this gap. By means of case studies, we demonstrate how the requirements fulfilled by SEXTANT are conducive to an understanding needed to perform a maintenance task
Keywords :
formal specification; program visualisation; programming environments; reverse engineering; software maintenance; Eclipse IDE; SEXTANT software exploration tool; functional requirement; program comprehension; reverse engineering; software maintenance; software understanding; software visualization; Cognition; Computer architecture; Navigation; Reverse engineering; Software maintenance; Software tools; Visualization; Software exploration; program comprehension; reverse engineering; software maintenance; software visualization.;
Journal_Title :
Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TSE.2006.94
