Understanding Ajax applications by connecting client and server-side execution traces

Ajax-enabled Web applications are a new breed of highly interactive, highly dynamic Web applications. Although Ajax allows developers to create rich Web applications, Ajax applications can be difficult to comprehend and thus to maintain. For this reason, we have created FireDetective, a tool that uses dynamic analysis at both the client (browser...

A controlled experiment for program comprehension through trace visualization

Accepted version for publication in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Software maintenance activities require a sufficient level of understanding of the software at hand that unfortunately is not always readily available. Execution trace visualization is a common approach in gaining this understanding, and among our own efforts in this...

Execution Trace Analysis through Massive Sequence and Circular Bundle Views

Preprint of article published in: Journal of Systems and Software (Elsevier), 81 (12), 2008; doi:10.1016/j.jss.2008.02.068 An important part of many software maintenance tasks is to gain a sufficient level of understanding of the system at hand. The use of dynamic information to aid in this software understanding process is a common practice...

A Systematic Survey of Program Comprehension through Dynamic Analysis

Preprint of paper published in: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 35 (5), 2009; doi:10.1109/TSE.2009.28 Program comprehension is an important activity in software maintenance, as software must be sufficiently understood before it can be properly modified. The study of a program's execution, known as dynamic analysis, has become a common...

Using Aspect Orientation in Legacy Environments for Reverse Engineering using Dynamic Analysis: An Industrial Experience Report

Preprint of article published in: Journal of Systems and Software (Elsevier), 82 (4), 2009; doi:10.1016/j.jss.2008.09.031 This paper reports on the challenges of using aspect-oriented programming (AOP) to aid in re-engineering a legacy C application. More specifically, we describe how AOP helps in the important reverse engineering step which...

On Large Execution Traces and Trace Abstraction Techniques

Preprint of paper published in: Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution (Wiley), 2008 Program comprehension is an important concern in the context of software maintenance tasks because these activities generally require a certain degree of knowledge of the system at hand. Although the use of dynamic analysis for information gathering has...

Automatic Identification of Key Classes in a Software System Using Webmining Techniques

Preprint of article published in: Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice (Wiley), 20 (6), 2008; doi:10.1002/smr.370 Software engineers new to a project are often stuck sorting through hundreds of classes in order to find those few classes that offer a significant insight into the inner workings of the software...