Visualizing class interfaces with formal concept analysis
Uri Dekel, Yossi Gil · 2003
Our research promotes the use of a mathematical concept lattice as a novel visualization of the interfaces of Java classes. The binary relation of accesses between methods and fields, from which the lattice is constructed, serves as a heuristic for an automatic feature categorization. We demonstrate in a detailed real-life case study that such a lattice is valuable for understanding and reverse-engineering purposes, in that it helps reason about the interface and structure of the class and find errors in the absence of source code. We also show that if the source code of the class is available, then the lattice can be of assistance in selecting an efficient reading order.