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Welcome to the ExplorViz documentation (Docs) wiki!

The following sections describe the project and how to create the necessary preconditions for ExplorViz, as well as how to install and configure it. The first section describes the general procedure for users on how ExplorViz can be used. The second section offers more detailed information how to get started with ExplorViz as a developer.

Project Description

ExplorViz uses dynamic analysis techniques to provide live trace visualization of the communication in large software landscape. It targets system and program comprehension in those landscapes while still providing details on the communication within an application. A landscape perspective enriches current system visualizations with additional abstraction levels for efficient comprehension of communication between hundreds of applications which is often encountered in, for instance, Cloud environments. On the application level perspective, ExplorViz utilizes the 3D city metaphor combined with an interactive concept of showing only details that are in focus of the analysis. For best accessibility, ExplorViz is a web-based tool featuring cutting-edge technologies like WebGL and HTML 5.

Given the 3D city metaphor visualization of an application, we investigate new interaction styles and higher immersion for a more effective and efficient program comprehension process. For this purpose, we utilize uprising technologies and evaluate developed approaches in experiments with real test subjects.

The usability and effectiveness of ExplorViz has been investigated in controlled experiments which resulted in increased efficiency and effectiveness over competing approaches.

Quick Start Guide for users

Version 1.2.0 and later (latest version)

1. Install the latest Chrome or Firefox browser.
2. Start a server on which ExplorViz should run (a fully-configured docker container can be found here).
3. Start monitoring an (Java) application
   1. A sample application can be found here.
   2. To instrument your own application, the fundamental monitoring set up can be found here.

Version 1.1.1 and earlier

1. Download the latest release.
2. Put the ROOT.war into your application server (e.g., Apache Tomcat).
3. Add the explorviz-monitoring.jar to your application's lib folder.
4. Locally start your application with the additional parameter -javaagent:lib/explorviz-monitoring.jar.
5. Open http://127.0.0.1:8080 in your HTML5 compatible browser (e.g., Chrome). As default, ExplorViz monitors all method calls. You might want to configure the monitoring beforehand.

Quick Start Guide for developers

Version 1.2.0 and later (latest version)

1. Install the latest Chrome or Firefox browser.
2. Install and configure the backend and frontend.
3. Take a look at Developing Extensions.

Version 1.1.1 and earlier

1. Install the latest Chrome browser.
2. Download the Eclipse IDE for Java and DSL Developers and JDK 8.
3. Extract and start the IDE.
4. Install the latest Google Webkit Toolkit Eclipse Plugin.
5. Download the four projects Common, Analysis, Monitoring, and ExplorViz (Server).
6. Import the four projects into the previously downloaded Eclipse IDE.
7. Start the Server component by clicking ExplorViz Server in the run menu.
8. Start your Chrome Browser and navigate to http://localhost:8888.
9. After each change to the source code, you can press F5 to see the conducted changes.
10. To get input, you can use the Start Monitoring Test App from the run menu or proceed like described in the Quick Start Guide above.