TraceGraph:
Immediate Visual Location of Software Features
Kazimiras Lukoit, Norman Wilde, Scott Stowell, Tim Hennessey
Department of Computer Science
The University of West Florida
Pensacola, FL 32514
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Software engineers often need to locate where particular features of a program are implemented in order to fix a bug or introduce an enhancement. This paper describes a tool called TraceGraph to support this task, particularly for large, long-running or interactive software. TraceGraph provides a simple visual display of the program's trace which allows changes in execution to be easily distinguished. A software engineer can run the feature he or she is interested in, and immediately view how program execution varies. Case studies on two large systems show how TraceGraph may be applied to different kinds of traces. Displays similar to TraceGraph would be good candidates for inclusion in software monitoring or debugging systems.
This technical report may be cited as SERC-TR-86-F, Software Engineering Research Center, Purdue University, 1398 Dept. of Computer Science, West Lafayette, IN 47906, February 2000.
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This research was not funded by the Software Engineering Research Center
Address correspondence to: Norman Wilde, Department of Computer Science, University of West Florida, 11000 University Parkway, Pensacola, Florida 32514, U. S. A., Tel. 850-474-2542, Fax 850-857-6056, http://www.cs.uwf.edu/~wilde