Visualization of Message Passing

By: Jesse Szwedko

Literature Survey

Yielded a few different approaches: Information murals

Theard Arcs

prefuse

Information murals

Used to visualize interactions between objects and functions in, specifically, C++ programs

Uses a modified call graph

Allows user to identify message patterns visually (built on top of Motif)

Jerding, D.F. and Stasko, J.T. and Ball, T. Visualizing message patterns in object-oriented program executions. ICSE'97

Information murals

Jerding, D.F. and Stasko, J.T. and Ball, T. and Georgia Institute of Technology. Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center Visualizing message patterns in object-oriented program executions 1996

Information murals

Jerding, D.F. and Stasko, J.T. and Ball, T. and Georgia Institute of Technology. Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center Visualizing message patterns in object-oriented program executions 1996

Jerding, D.F. and Stasko, J.T. and Ball, T. and Georgia Institute of Technology. Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center Visualizing message patterns in object-oriented program executions 1996

Thread Arcs

Visualize messages in a conversational style (similar to gmail.com)

Differentiate between contributors and recipients

Performs well for “bushy” threads

Kerr, B., Thread arcs: An email thread visualization. 2003. InfoVis 2003

Thread Arcs

Thread Arcs

prefuse

Java and XML based

Very flexible and simple to use

Heer, J. and Card, S.K. and Landay, J.A. Prefuse: a toolkit for interactive information visualization. CHI'05