Annotation Visualizer - English Tutorial

Tutorial on how to use and navigate the Annotation Visualizer.

AVisualizer: https://avisualizer.herokuapp.com
Repo: https://github.com/phillima/avisualizer

The AVisualizer is an open-source polymetric software visualization tool. It implements our approach to display code annotations usage/distribution in a target java software. We use a circle packing strategy to display the system.

The tool has three views that you can navigate to and from.

?????? ????: Displays java packages (circles with dashed lines on the border) and code annotations schemas (colored circles) per package. The size of colored circle is proportional to the number of annotations of that schema inside the package. The color of these circle are related to their schema

??????? ????: Displays classes (white circles) inside the packages. Inside each class there are colored circles that represents annotations being used by the classes. The color is also related to the schema. The size of these colored circles is defined by the LOCAD (Lines of Code in Annotation Declaration) metric. In other words, LOCAD, is the number of lines used to write the annotation. To access the Package View, simply click on any annotation schema from the System View. To go back to the System View, click on the grayish-background in the external part.

- Example: The @Override has LOCAD = 1


????? ????: Display classes (still white circles). But now you can see how the annotations (still colored circles) are grouped inside a class. In other words, we can see how many annotations are configuring any specific method, or class member. Grouped annotations will have a circle frame containing them. Annotations without a frame means they are configuring the class itself. The size of annotations (colored circles) is defined by the AA (Arguments in Annotations) metric. That is, the size is defined by the number of arguments/attributes passed as parameter when writing the annotation. To access the Class View, you must be on the Package View and then simply click on any annotation. To go back just click the exterior grayish-background. Notice that we switch metric from the Package View (uses LOCAD) to the Class View (uses AA)

- Example: The annotation @Column(name = "Id") has AA = 1 and LOCAD = 1
- Example: The annotation @Override has AA = 0 and LOCAD = 1