CAST & LIRIS team up to revolutionise software visualisation

CAST has announced a strategic research collaboration with Laboratoire d'InfoRmatique en Image et Systèmes d'information (LIRIS) to develop advanced algorithms aimed at improving the analysis, visualisation, and understanding of complex software systems.

The collaboration seeks to create algorithms that provide more efficient and user-friendly visual representations of application structures. According to CAST, this effort is necessary as home-grown software applications become increasingly complex, requiring sophisticated analytical capabilities and intuitive ways to visualise and manage their internal structures. By leveraging LIRIS's expertise in graph technology, CAST hopes to enhance its ability to visualise and analyse complex software architectures, aiding users in understanding, improving, and transforming their software systems.

The initiative also aims to develop progressive visualisation techniques enabling users to interactively explore graphs and tailor their views to specific needs. The goal is to offer more efficient visual analyses of application graphs that represent intricate software applications.

LIRIS is supported by several notable French research institutions, including the CNRS, INSA Lyon, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Université Lumière Lyon 2, and École Centrale de Lyon. The collaboration is led by the GOAL team within LIRIS, known for its expertise in graph research, developing efficient algorithms, and applying them to fields such as big data and security.

"Collaborating with LIRIS and the GOAL team, renowned for their expertise in graph technology, aligns perfectly with our mission to provide deeper insights and intuitive user experiences for our clients grappling with complex software systems," stated Luc Perard, Vice President of CAST Imaging. "This partnership underscores our commitment to pushing the boundaries of software intelligence technology."

CAST Imaging's R&D efforts focus on comprehensively analysing application components and interactions and clearly visualising this information to facilitate understanding. As application complexity increases, the amount of information extracted and represented by CAST also grows, necessitating more advanced visualisation techniques. Consequently, CAST Imaging, described as the "MRI for software," aims to better present interactive maps of thousands of reverse-engineered code elements, effectively creating a living knowledge base that empowers technologists involved in modernisation, refactoring, cloud migration, and similar activities.

Professor Hamamache Kheddouci, who leads the LIRIS collaboration with CAST, added, "The research carried out in this collaboration between LIRIS and CAST on large real data graphs will bring both technological solutions for applied CAST barriers as well as new challenges and new solutions to the theoretical issues of GOAL team researchers."