Understanding and characterizing software visualization systems

The general term software visualization refers to graphical views or illustrations of the entities and characteristics of computer programs and algorithms. This term along with many others including data structure display, program animation, algorithm animation, etc., have been used inconsistently in the literature, which has led to confusion in describing systems providing these capabilities. This paper presents a scaled characterization of software visualization terms along aspect, abstractness, animation, and automation dimensions. Rather than placing existing systems into hard-and-fast categories, it focuses on unique and differentiating aspects across all systems