Developing Relational Navigation to Effectively Understand Software

Speaker: Daniel Jarrott

When: 10:00, Thursday, 4th December, 2003

Venue: 78-420

Abstract:  Effective comprehension of complex software systems requires
understanding of both the individual documents that represent software
and the complex relationships that exist within and between documents.
Relationships of all kinds play a vital role in a software engineer's
comprehension of, and navigation within and between, software documents.
User-determined relationships have the additional role of enabling the
engineer to create and maintain relational documentation that cannot be
generated by tools or derived from other relationships. In this paper,
we argue that for a software development environment to effectively
support the understanding of complex software systems, relational
navigation must be supported at both the document-focused
(intra-document) and relation-focused (inter-document) levels. The need
for a relation-focused approach is highlighted by an evaluation of an
existing document-focused relational interface. This paper closes with
the requirements for a relation-focused approach to relational
navigation. These requirements focus on the user's perspective when
interacting with a collection of related documents. This work defines
the requirements for a software development environment that effectively
supports the understanding of the software documents and relationships
that define a complex software system.
 

Hospitality: Ben Long

Contact: Prof Paul Bailes (SSERG seminar co-ordinator) (p.bailes@epsa.uq.edu.au)

SSE seminar web page: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~sse/Seminars.html