Bernhard Reitinger
Technical University of Graz
Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision
A-8010 Graz
Austria
e-mail: breiting@icg.tu-graz.ac.at |
http://www.icg.tu-graz.ac.at |
Keywords: program visualization, virtual reality, program activity
Abstract
Program understanding is of major importance for software developers especially concerning long-running complex applications processing large amounts of data. As these applications usually have a vast number of source code lines, memory leaks or algorithmic errors are often crucial and hard to find. Therefore, developers desire some software tools which provide facilities for on-the-fly inspection in order to understand the behavior of their programs. In this context Virtual Reality can support drastically the understanding by using suitable graphical representations. In this paper we discuss some different representations for different program characteristics. This approach differs from traditional program analysis tools by using metaphors instead of common textual or 2D graphical displays.