Experimental Data for: Comparing Trace Visualizations for Program Comprehension through Controlled Experiments

<p>For efficient and effective program comprehension, it is essential to provide software engineers with appropriate visualizations of the program&#39;s execution traces. Empirical&nbsp;studies, such as controlled experiments, are required to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of proposed visualization techniques.</p> <p>We present controlled experiments to compare the trace visualization tools EXTRAVIS and ExplorViz in typical program comprehension tasks. We replicate the first controlled experiment with a second one targeting a differently sized software system. In addition to a thorough analysis of the strategies chosen by the participants, we report on common challenges comparing trace visualization techniques. Besides our own replication of the first experiment, we provide a package containing all our experimental data to facilitate the verifiability, reproducibility and further extensibility of our presented results.</p> <p>Although subjects spent similar time on program comprehension tasks with both tools for a small-sized system, analyzing a larger software system resulted in a significant efficiency advantage of 28 percent less time spent by using ExplorViz. Concerning the effectiveness (correct solutions for program comprehension tasks), we observed a significant improvement of correctness for both object system sizes of 39 and 61 percent with ExplorViz.</p> <p>This package contains the experimental data.</p>