On the Use of Software Visualization to Support Concern Modularization Analysis

Most of the methods for concern modularity analysis rely on the exploration of crosscutting concerns directly in source code artifacts. However, as both the code size and the number of concerns increase, analyses of concern properties become an even more cumbersome and time-consuming task. In this paper, we propose a visual representation of crosscutting concerns using a software visualization infrastructure called SourceMiner. The infrastructure facilitates concern modularization analysis based on the following concepts: inheritance tree and package-class-method structure. The analysis based on each of these concepts is supported by the views and its resources available in the infrastructure. An example of use illustrates the infrastructure support to visually analyze the concern modularity of an open source code.