Generating Abstractions for Visualization

Modern technology allows us to view our programs through the visual representations that we normally use to describe and understand them. We are currently developing a new visualization system that will take advantage of today''s technology to provide a flexible interface to a wide range of program visualizations. This system will allow the programmer to define visualizations as abstractions using queries over an object-oriented database of information about program. These abstractions can then be visualized and browsed using easily defined type-based mapping and a generic filtering mechanism. This paper details the mechanisms and techniques we use to integrate the variety of information sources in a software system and to provide the programmer with a simple and convenient interface for defining abstractions.