A Framework for Describing and Implementing Software Visualization Systems

In recent years many prototype systems have been developed for graphically visualizing program execution in an attempt to create a better interface between software engineers and their programs. Several classificationbased taxonomies have been proposed to describe computer program visualization systems and general frameworks have been suggested for implementation. In this paper we provide a framework for both describing existing systems and implementing new ones. We demonstrate the utility of automatic program visualization by re-implementing a number of classic systems using this framework.