Tool support for the navigation in graphical models

Graphical models are omnipresent in the software engineering field, but most current graphical modeling languages do not scale with the increasing size and complexity of today's systems. The navigation in the diagrams becomes a major problem especially if different aspects of the system are scattered over multiple, only loosely coupled diagrams. In this paper we present the hierarchical navigation capabilities of the Adora modeling tool. The user of this tool can freely control the level of detail in different parts of the model to reduce the size and complexity of the diagrams being displayed. Our fisheye visualization technique makes it possible to integrate all modeling aspects (structure, data, behavior, etc.) in one coherent model while keeping the size and complexity of the diagrams within reasonable limits.

[1]  Manojit Sarkar,et al.  Graphical fisheye views , 1994, CACM.

[2]  K. Barraclough.  Eclipse , 2006, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[3]  Hausi A. Müller,et al.  Graph Layout Adjustment Strategies , 1995, GD.

[4]  Martin Glinz,et al.  Human-Friendly Line Routing for Hierarchical Diagrams , 2006, 21st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE'06).

[5]  S. Meier,et al.  An Improved Fisheye Zoom Algorithm for Visualizing and Editing Hierarchical Models , 2007, Second International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Visualization (REV 2007).

[6]  Dov Dori.  Why significant UML change is unlikely , 2002, CACM.

[7]  Martin Glinz,et al.  An effective layout adaptation technique for a graphical modeling tool , 2003, 25th International Conference on Software Engineering, 2003. Proceedings..

[8]  GlinzMartin,et al.  Object-oriented modeling with ADORA , 2002 .

[9]  Marian Petre,et al.  Why looking isn't always seeing: readership skills and graphical programming , 1995, CACM.

[10]  Martin Glinz,et al.  A visualization concept for hierarchical object models , 1998, Proceedings 13th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (Cat. No.98EX239).

[11]  G. W. Furnas,et al.  Generalized fisheye views , 1986, CHI '86.

[12]  Kozo Sugiyama,et al.  Layout Adjustment and the Mental Map , 1995, J. Vis. Lang. Comput..

[13]  Lyn Bartram,et al.  The continuous zoom: a constrained fisheye technique for viewing and navigating large information spaces , 1995, UIST '95.