Title page for ETD etd-07162008-231617

Type of Document

Master's Thesis

Author

Sundararaman, Jaishankar

URN

etd-07162008-231617

Title

HDPV: Highly Interactive, Faithful, In-Vivo Runtime State Visualization for Software Programs

Degree

Master of Science

Department

Computer Science

Advisory Committee

Advisor Name	Title
Godmar Back	Committee Chair
Chris North	Committee Member
Eli Tilevich	Committee Member

Keywords

Software Comprehension
Program Visualization
Visual Debugging

Date of Defense

2008-06-26

Availability

unrestricted

Abstract

Program Visualization systems use graphics and animation to represent the behavior of
software programs. These systems represent different aspects of the program such as source
code, control flow, data structures, runtime state of the program. Representing the actual
runtime state of the program finds its use in a variety of applications including program
understanding, visual debugging, and pedagogy. However, existing state-of-the-art program
visualization systems are limited in : (1) not providing sufficient interactive capabilities to
the user; (2) not faithfully representing the runtime state of the program; (3) not allowing
users to apply different layout strategies to the visualization; (4) being tied to a specific
programming language.

To address these limitations, this thesis presents HDPV, a program state visualization system
that visualizes any C, C++, or Java program. HDPV is based on a canonical state model that
represents the memory layout of the program as a graph of memory blocks. It decouples the
visualization of the program from the actual programming language in which it is written,
thereby making the system language independent. HDPV supports a host of interactive
features that allow the user to selectively explore different parts of the program’s runtime
state. Novel layout strategies support customization through user interaction. We provide a list of use-cases to show that HDPV can be applied to a wide variety of applications including - but not limited to - understanding programs that use basic concepts in computer science, demonstrating algorithm implementations, and debugging software programs.

Files

Filename		Size	Approximate Download Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds)
Filename		Size	28.8 Modem	56K Modem	ISDN (64 Kb)	ISDN (128 Kb)	Higher-speed Access
	HDPV_Demo.mp4	47.95 Mb	03:41:58	01:54:09	01:39:53	00:49:56	00:04:15
	HDPV_Sundararaman.pdf	2.56 Mb	00:11:49	00:06:05	00:05:19	00:02:39	00:00:13