SoftArchViz: A Software Architecture Visualization Tool

This tool presents a technique for visualizing large software architectures using the Multi-Dimensional Scaling Algorithm. Our visualization tool,
SoftArchViz
, can be used to study different architectural views that represent different attributes of the software components. We visualize the architecture of the Network Appliance
^™
operating system known as Data ONTAP®7G (ON-TAP) using graphical "glyphs" representing individual software components that vary their
spatial position
,
color, and texture properties to encode the components' attribute values. We also represent the correspondence in the architecture at different stages of the development cycle and thereby identify all the components that changed and the extent of those changes, and thus evaluate the actual implementation of the architecture.