Optimisation of a Graph Visualization Tool: Vizz3D

Abstract: Vizz3D is a graph visualization tool developed at Växjö University. It is used to visualize different aspects of software systems in 3D, based on the static analysis of source code. It can optionally use Java3D or OpenGL as a graphics library. In order to visualize huge 3D structures performance is very important. This comes from the fact that the structures must be redrawn with no delay when a user interacts with the system. If there were a delay the user would loose the cognitive orientation because his interaction and the feedback would not fit. Vizz3D was not capable to run huge visualizations fast enough, and therefore careful optimisation was essential. Additionally, the Vizz3D tool is just at the beginning of its software life cycle. For optimisation, JOGL (Java Bindings for OpenGL) was chosen. The extension with a JOGL version was necessary since the GL4Java (OpenGL for Java) wrapper used for the implementation of Vizz3D is no longer supported. JOGL was therefore needed for assuring future maintainability. The JOGL version of Vizz3D was optimised to be able to visualize huge graphs with acceptable performance. To determine what areas of Vizz3D that consumed most of its resources, the process of profiling were used. The system performance was improved according to several aspects: Computational performance, Scalability, Perceived performance, RAM footprint and Start-up time. The results were then evaluated by using benchmarking techniques. After optimisation, the performance of Vizz3D was improved a lot which led to that huge graphs now could be visualized with acceptable performance.