Ebook: Program Monitoring and Visualization: An Exploratory Approach

In computer science, the primary application of visualization technology is software visualization: the use of graphics to portray information obtained from a static or dynamic analysis of a program. Software visualization is used in several phases of the software development lifecycle, but it is of particular interest in the "back- end" tasks of debugging, performance tuning, and understanding complex systems in order to maintain them. Software visualization is expected to improve the back end of the software development process which can result in huge cost savings. Debugging, tuning and maintaining programs comprise the majority of the high costs associated with software development. Unfortunately, the rate at which these software technologies have improved has been gradual. The task of writing software visualization tools is difficult, and most existing systems are limited to a narrow scope, such as the visualization of a single well-understood algorithm from a hand-instrumented source program. This book presents software visualization at a level suitable for a senior level undergraduate or graduate course or for the interested technical professional. The approach is to give a survey of the field, and then present a specific research framework designed to reduce the effort required to write visualization tools. A wide range of simple program control flow and data structure visualizations are then presented as examples of how to obtain information about program behavior, and how to present it graphically. Source code fragments and screen images illustrate each example.

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In computer science, the primary application of visualization technology is software visualization: the use of graphics to portray information obtained from a static or dynamic analysis of a program. Software visualization is used in several phases of the software development lifecycle, but it is of particular interest in the "back- end" tasks of debugging, performance tuning, and understanding complex systems in order to maintain them. Software visualization is expected to improve the back end of the software development process which can result in huge cost savings. Debugging, tuning and maintaining programs comprise the majority of the high costs associated with software development. Unfortunately, the rate at which these software technologies have improved has been gradual. The task of writing software visualization tools is difficult, and most existing systems are limited to a narrow scope, such as the visualization of a single well-understood algorithm from a hand-instrumented source program. This book presents software visualization at a level suitable for a senior level undergraduate or graduate course or for the interested technical professional. The approach is to give a survey of the field, and then present a specific research framework designed to reduce the effort required to write visualization tools. A wide range of simple program control flow and data structure visualizations are then presented as examples of how to obtain information about program behavior, and how to present it graphically. Source code fragments and screen images illustrate each example.

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In computer science, the primary application of visualization technology is software visualization: the use of graphics to portray information obtained from a static or dynamic analysis of a program. Software visualization is used in several phases of the software development lifecycle, but it is of particular interest in the "back- end" tasks of debugging, performance tuning, and understanding complex systems in order to maintain them. Software visualization is expected to improve the back end of the software development process which can result in huge cost savings. Debugging, tuning and maintaining programs comprise the majority of the high costs associated with software development. Unfortunately, the rate at which these software technologies have improved has been gradual. The task of writing software visualization tools is difficult, and most existing systems are limited to a narrow scope, such as the visualization of a single well-understood algorithm from a hand-instrumented source program. This book presents software visualization at a level suitable for a senior level undergraduate or graduate course or for the interested technical professional. The approach is to give a survey of the field, and then present a specific research framework designed to reduce the effort required to write visualization tools. A wide range of simple program control flow and data structure visualizations are then presented as examples of how to obtain information about program behavior, and how to present it graphically. Source code fragments and screen images illustrate each example.
Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xiv
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Introduction....Pages 3-10
Related Work....Pages 11-23
Visualization Principles and Techniques....Pages 24-37
Front Matter....Pages 39-39
An Overview of the Alamo Architecture....Pages 41-53
A Multitasking Icon Interpreter....Pages 54-61
Execution Monitoring in MT Icon....Pages 62-75
Front Matter....Pages 77-77
Following the Locus of Execution....Pages 79-84
Monitoring Procedure Activity....Pages 85-99
Monitoring Memory Usage....Pages 100-110
Monitoring String Scanning....Pages 111-119
Monitoring Structure and Variable Usage....Pages 120-132
Front Matter....Pages 133-133
Monitor Coordination and Communication....Pages 135-144
Performance....Pages 145-150
Conclusions and Future Work....Pages 151-158
Back Matter....Pages 159-209

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In computer science, the primary application of visualization technology is software visualization: the use of graphics to portray information obtained from a static or dynamic analysis of a program. Software visualization is used in several phases of the software development lifecycle, but it is of particular interest in the "back- end" tasks of debugging, performance tuning, and understanding complex systems in order to maintain them. Software visualization is expected to improve the back end of the software development process which can result in huge cost savings. Debugging, tuning and maintaining programs comprise the majority of the high costs associated with software development. Unfortunately, the rate at which these software technologies have improved has been gradual. The task of writing software visualization tools is difficult, and most existing systems are limited to a narrow scope, such as the visualization of a single well-understood algorithm from a hand-instrumented source program. This book presents software visualization at a level suitable for a senior level undergraduate or graduate course or for the interested technical professional. The approach is to give a survey of the field, and then present a specific research framework designed to reduce the effort required to write visualization tools. A wide range of simple program control flow and data structure visualizations are then presented as examples of how to obtain information about program behavior, and how to present it graphically. Source code fragments and screen images illustrate each example.
Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xiv
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Introduction....Pages 3-10
Related Work....Pages 11-23
Visualization Principles and Techniques....Pages 24-37
Front Matter....Pages 39-39
An Overview of the Alamo Architecture....Pages 41-53
A Multitasking Icon Interpreter....Pages 54-61
Execution Monitoring in MT Icon....Pages 62-75
Front Matter....Pages 77-77
Following the Locus of Execution....Pages 79-84
Monitoring Procedure Activity....Pages 85-99
Monitoring Memory Usage....Pages 100-110
Monitoring String Scanning....Pages 111-119
Monitoring Structure and Variable Usage....Pages 120-132
Front Matter....Pages 133-133
Monitor Coordination and Communication....Pages 135-144
Performance....Pages 145-150
Conclusions and Future Work....Pages 151-158
Back Matter....Pages 159-209
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