Visualizing Feature Interaction in 3-D

Without a clear understanding of how features of a software system are implemented, a maintenance change in one part of the code may risk adversely affecting other features. Feature implementation and relationships between features are not explicit in the code. To address this problem, we propose an interactive 3D visualization technique based on a combination of static and dynamic analysis which enables the software developer to step through visual representations of execution traces. We visualize dynamic behaviors of execution traces in terms of object creations and interactions and represent this in the context of a static class-hierarchy view of a system. We describe how we apply our approach to a case study to visualize and identify common parts of the code that are active during feature execution.