A Survey Paper on Software Architecture Visualization,” technical report

Understanding the software architecture is a vital step towards building and maintaining software systems. But software architecture is an intangible conceptual entity. Therefore, it is hard to comprehend a software architecture without a visual mapping that reduces the burden on the human brain. Visualizing software architecture has been one of the most important topics in software visualization. Not only are architects interested in this visualization but also developers, testers, project managers and even customers. This paper is a survey on recent and key literature on software architecture visualization. It touches on efforts that defined what characteristics an effective visualization should have. It compares various efforts in this discipline according to taxonomies such as dimensionality, multiplicity of views and use of metaphors. The paper also discusses trends and patterns in recent research and addresses research questions that are still open for further investigation