Modeling, visualizing, and checking software architectures collaboratively in shared virtual worlds

Software visualization is useful to highlight certain aspects of software in a way that is easy to grasp for humans. In this paper, we present our software visualization platform SEE which, among other use cases related to software development, assists developers and architects in identifying inconsistencies between the architecture and the implementation of a software— using the software reflexion model. SEE is based on the software-as-a-city metaphor and presents the generated software cities in virtual worlds that can be entered by multiple users from different locations (i.e., they do not have to be physically in the same place). Within these worlds, users can see each other as avatars and communicate via a built-in voice chat. A special feature of SEE is the ability for users to interact remotely with the cities in real-time and thus creates a basis for collaborative work that goes far beyond the classic means of distributed software development.