You can now analyze PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files with Understand. Just select “Web” In the New Project Wizard and add your files.

We’re excited about this new feature and would like your feedback, please let us know what you think or if you run into any problems.

Last month, we decided to temporarily close the forum. We have finished setting up a new forum and are “open for business” again.

We are focusing the new forum on Understand 2.5 so are not migrating the content from the old forum. If you need to access old posts for some reason you can temporarily find them here.

You will need to create a new user account, and to prevent spam, all new user registrations are reviewed before you can post the first time. We apologize for the initial inconvenience but feel it will make the forum much more useable for everyone in the long run.

You can access the forum on the support page of the website, or here:

http://www.scitools.com/support/forum

We’ve added a new dependency graph with some great interactive capabilities. If you’ve been looking for a way to visualize your high level code layout and intra-project dependencies, this is it. Watch this short video to get a taste of how useful these graphs are.

Dr. A. Gunes Koru and Dr. Khaled El Emam’s latest paper in IEEE Software, titled “The Theory of Relative Dependency: Higher Coupling Concentration in Smaller Modules”, turns conventional thoughts on where to test upside down by showing that smaller modules, not larger or more complex modules, can provide more effective testing payback in terms of defects eliminated:

Abstract:

Recent studies have repeatedly found that smaller modules are proportionally more defect-prone. In this article, the authors formulate and test a hypothesis stating that smaller modules are proportionally more coupled, given that dependencies caused by coupling have been consistently associated with defect-proneness. Strong evidence supports this hypothesis. Furthermore, refactoring exacerbates this effect. On the basis of this study’s highly consistent results, the authors state the empirically based theory of relative dependency. That is, in large-scale software systems, smaller modules will be proportionally more dependent compared to larger ones. These findings have two implications for practice. First, we now have an empirically supported mechanism explaining the observations that defect concentration is higher in smaller modules. Practitioners can use this mechanism as evidence while seeking resources and support to revise or amend their organizations’ quality assurance and quality control practices. Second, particularly for the projects that refactor extensively, such as those using agile methods, focusing defect detection activities on smaller modules will increase their efficiency and effectiveness even more.

They used Understand to generate the C++ measurements of many large open source projects.  We donate licenses of Understand to worthy research projects frequently. We’ve e-mailed many times with Dr. Koru to support his efforts and are pleased his work was accepted by IEEE.

The team extensively used the DIT (Depth Inheritance Tree) and CBO (Coupling Between Objects) that Understand provides.

We’ve noted a few ideas for product enhancements from reading their article.

We changed our website concurrent to introducing Understand 2.5.  We hope you like it. We’ve tried to keep it stylish and focused on information, not fluff.

You will notice, however, that the Support Forum hasn’t been moved.  We’ve had trouble with it and our searching for a replacement.

It will come back on line, but not until we have a replacement we think we can stick with long term.

For now, use support@scitools.com or the Chat available on the website for support.

This weekend we released Understand 2.5 (build 507).  Its main changes include:

• Instant Search – a new feature which permits instant searching in even the largest bodies of code. Indexing starts after parsing ends. It operates in the background without holding up any other activities. When complete the search box in the upper right instantly answers your queries.
• Dependency Graphs -  these replace our old dependency graphs with new layout, saving, and cool clustering, save, undo, and redo options. They use a much updated layout engine, which we will roll into our other graphs and use to create new ones in the coming months.
• Simplified Licensing – Understand 2.5 includes all languages and all features. The only licensing difference, in terms of price, is the use of floating or specific developer licenses.  Understand 2.5 does use a new license – your old one will not run it permanently. Instead, it will operate for 30 days, giving you time to request a replacement license if you are under maintenance. This is done directly from Understand or via our website.
• Pricing -  we’ve removed all levels and language variants. Understand 2.5 has it all. This will be our path going forward with new features as well.  The new price is a little higher and the only differentiation is if you need a Single Developer or Floating License.   If you are under maintenance you can update to Understand 2.5 without any cost. Nor will the higher price affect your maintenance going forward. It will remain 18% of your purchase price annually.
• TrackBack Removed – this will be missed by many users, but we needed to focus on core analysis capabilities.
  Take heart, the engineer who wrote much of it will be taking it open source very soon. Look for an announcement here. To be notified by e-mail send a request to support@scitools.com.
• Menu Revamping – menus were moved about and standardized to be more in common with most applications. Additionally, edit menu items are now contextual with editor and graph operations. As an application ages, menus become complex and suffer from bloat. We wanted to simplify and reduce clutter.
• License Manager GUI with Improved Diagnostics – our old license manager does not need to be updated. If it is updated, or for new installations, a new License Manager GUI simplifies operation. Additionally, the server and clients have many more diagnostics embedded to diagnose any licensing manager problems.
• And many hundreds of bug fixes and minor improvements.

We know change can make winners and losers. We’ve tried to make every user a winner with Understand 2.5. If we failed for you, let us know how, and we will try to sort it out and make you as happy as we can.

With build 476 we are adding an exciting new capability to User Tools. The ability to perform operations directly in the editor. In the the User Tool configuration menu (Tools | Configure User Tools), there are two new fields, Input and Output. As you might expect, the Input field lets you select what text you want to feed into your tool, and the output field lets you choose where you want the output redirected. (more…)

We’ve made several changes to the Understand Perl API recently. The largest change was upgrading from Perl 5.6.0 to 5.10.0 in build 473.
In addition to several cool new features like the smart match operators and switch statements, Perl 5.10 runs faster and has a smaller memory footprint. For more details on what the changes are and how to use
them, see the Perl 5.10 Release Announcement.

We are also in the process of adding Snapshot support for the Perl API for build 476. Now you can access historical versions of the code through your scripts as well. For example you can compare versions of files or write a script to compare metrics between versions. (more…)

Customers tell us frequently that they appreciate our weekly builds. They provide a constant stream of new features and bug fixes to Understand users. We like weekly builds because it means we don’t have to provide patch binaries to customers in dire need of an update and also because we hate the idea of a crash or bug existing in the wild longer than necessary.

But what do we do with new capabilities that we want feedback on, but aren’t quite “production ready”? We faced this with Understand 2.0, which had lots of new features/capabilities.  Frankly, I think we took too long getting feedback and had to redo more than we would have liked once we did get user experiences.

Going foward we have big plans for Understand and the core technology it is based on. And so that we can get rapid feedback, we will be exposing features much earlier than we have in the past using a vehicle called “Scitools Labs”.

Scitools Labs isn’t some effort to make us look bigger than we are. We are still the 20 something person company we’ve always been.  Instead, it is our way of asking… “this is where we are heading, what do you think?”.

Build 471, which will be released tomorrow, includes three Scitools Labs features:

• Dependence Analysis, Graphing and metrics for files and architectures
• Stack Analysis specific to Microchip Corporation’s compiler/micro-controllers
• UnderstandYourCode.Com – a website hosting free tools, online analysis and new web oriented features we are putting into Understand.

I’ll write more specifically about each new Scitools Labs technology in blog postings prefixed with “Scitools Labs:“.

And remember, your input is the whole idea, so don’t be shy – let us know what you think.

Build 470, released today, introduces beta support for VHDL.  E-mail support@scitools.com for instructions on how to enabble that support.