CIE Components in Electronics
GrammaTech, a manufacturer of software-analysis tools, has unveiled a number of new enhancements to CodeSonar’s software architecture visualisation features. The newest features include a treemap view designed to allow users to see the hierarchical structure of the code in a very information-dense form. The view uses colorisation to show the density of defects in modules so users can easily identify the most problematic parts of the code.
The call graph is organised by module structure. Users can drill down to see a greater level of detail, choose different layouts such as treemap, circuit, cluster, flow, radial and other layouts, and attach persistent notes to the diagram. Transitions such as zooming or layout changes are fluid and real-time.
“The visualisation capabilities of CodeSonar allow developers to quickly gain an understanding of very large code bases and potential vulnerabilities,” said Paul Anderson, vice president of Engineering at GrammaTech. “CodeSonar visualisation scales to tens of millions of lines of code and is designed to show what is appropriate for the current level of abstraction.”
With CodeSonar users can start at individual functions to gain insight from a bottom-up perspective, annotate nodes and edges with additional information and, overlay the visualisation with information on defects and source-code metrics. CodeSonar also includes other program-understanding and navigation features, and supports sharing of diagrams between team members.
Other features allow users to search the graph for functions of interest, and navigate to and from the source code of the program. In addition, the architecture is extensible, so users can generate graphs from other sources, feed them in an XML format to the tool, and see them in the same user interface. CodeSonar visualization works in standard web clients.
CodeSonar has long been used by embedded developers working on mission-critical applications such as satellites, avionics, industrial controls and medical devices. Companies outside the safety-critical space also use CodeSonar to improve software reliability and security.
