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A bidirectional-transformation-based framework for software visualization and visual editing

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Abstract

Software visualization and visual editing are important and practical techniques to improve the development of complex software systems. A challenge when applying the two technologies is how to realize the correspondence, a bidirectional relationship, between the data and its visual representation correctly. Although many tools and frameworks have been developed to support the construction of visual tools, it is still complicated and error-prone to realize the bidirectional relationship. In this paper, we propose a model-driven and bidirectional-transformation-based framework for data visualization and visual editing. Our approach mainly focuses on 1) how to define and manage graphical symbols in the model form and 2) how to specify and implement the bidirectional relationship based on the technique of bidirectional model transformation. Then, a prototype tool and four case studies are presented to evaluate the feasibility of our work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer and Communication Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xiao He & ChangJun Hu

  2. Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies of Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Xiao He, ZhiYi Ma & WeiZhong Shao

Authors
  1. Xiao He
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  2. ChangJun Hu
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  3. ZhiYi Ma
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  4. WeiZhong Shao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to ChangJun Hu.

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He, X., Hu, C., Ma, Z. et al. A bidirectional-transformation-based framework for software visualization and visual editing. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 57, 1–23 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-013-4919-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-013-4919-1

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