Development of Analysis and Visualization Tool for Java Source Code Changes using Reverse Engineering Technique

In order to quickly understand which changes of source codes have been made and to perform effective maintenance of a system, it is important to visualize the changed parts. Although there are many works for analyzing software changes, there are few works for visualizing both of the change types and change quantifications for Java based systems. In this paper, we propose a change analysis technique based on class diagram and provide a change visualization technique by using change quantification information. In order to check the structural changes in source codes, source codes are transformed to class diagrams by reverse engineering methods. On the class diagrams, the changes are analyzed and quantified by numbers. Based on the change quantification, the changes are visualized on the class diagram by color spectrum. By using visualization techniques, maintainers can easily recognize the code changes to reduce the cost and time of maintenance.