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It visualizes runtime information graphically as an object diagram and is fully integrated into IntelliJ IDEA, enabling interactive exploration of execution details beyond traditional textual debuggers. The paper motivates the need for graphical views, presents the tool’s usage focus, and describes how interactions support understanding of object worlds.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":30,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/technology/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-visual-debugger-tool/657568/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-visual-debugger-tool/657568.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Mimi","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-29","2026-10-26",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What problem does the Visual Debugger Tool address?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It targets the high cost and time developers spend on software debugging and validation by helping them understand program execution more quickly during debugging.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does the tool present program execution information?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"It visualizes execution information as an object diagram, showing how program data structures relate during runtime.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What makes the tool practical for developers using IntelliJ IDEA?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It is fully integrated into IntelliJ IDEA and complements the traditional textual debugger while offering interactive exploration of deeper execution details.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},657568,1792983201,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":29,"category_name":30,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":8,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":24,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":143},2336477974920,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","The Visual Debugger Tool  \nTim Kruter∗, Harald Knig†∗, Adrian Rutle∗, Yngve Lamo∗  \n∗ Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway †FHDW Hannover, Germany  \n{tkra, aru, [yla](yla}@hvl.no)[}](yla}@hvl.no)[@hvl.no](yla}@hvl.no), [harald.koenig@fhdw.de](harald.koenig@fhdw.de)  \nAbstract—Debugging is an essential part of software maintenance and evolution since it allows software developers to analyze program execution step by step. Understanding a program is required to fix potential flaws, alleviate bottlenecks, and implement new desired features. Thus, software developers spend a large percentage of their time validating and debugging software, resulting in high software maintenance and evolution cost. We aim to reduce this cost by providing a novel visual debugging tool to software developers to foster program comprehension during debugging. Our debugging tool visualizes program execution information graphically as an object diagram and is fully integrated into the popular Java development environment IntelliJ IDEA. Moreover, the object diagram allows interactions to explore program execution information in more detail. A demonstration of our tool is available at [https://www.youtube](https://www.youtube). com/watch?v=lU OgotweRk.  \nIndex Terms—Debugging, Visual Debugging, Visual Debugger, IntelliJ IDEA Plugin, Software Maintenance, Software Visualization  \nI. INTRODUCTION  \nDebugging is an essential part of software maintenance and evolution since it allows a software developer to analyze program execution step by step. Nowadays, debugging tools are integrated with every modern Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and are indispensable in software development. Debugging is used to understand program control- and data flow such that a software developer can locate and fix reported bugs or extend the program to implement new desired features. Thus, debugging is crucial for software maintenance and evolution, and software developers spend between 35 and 50 percent of their time validating and debugging software [1] . Consequently, 50-75 percent of the total budget of software development projects is used for debugging, testing, and verification [1] . We aim to reduce this cost by providing a novel debugging tool to software developers to foster program comprehension during debugging. Reduced time spent on debugging can be used to implement new features, i.e., create business value for customers.  \nTraditionally program execution information is represented in a textual manner during debugging (see figure 2 in section II) . Debugging tools integrated with IDEs, such as IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse, show the top-level variables contained in the current program scope. However, the desired program execution information is often not present in the top-level variables but spread out on lower levels of potentially different variables. Thus, in specific scenarios, a graphical representation results in a faster and better understanding of the shown program execution information. We have developed a tool that  \nvisualizes the current program execution information graphically as an object diagram to foster program comprehension. This open-source tool, called the visual debugger, is integrated with IntelliJ IDEA 1 , which is the most popular Java IDE according to the JVM Ecosystem Report 2021 [3] . Compared to other tools, our visual debugger is optimized for industrial use since it is straightforward, lightweight, and non-intrusive. It can be used alongside the traditional textual debugger and allows interactions to explore program execution information in more detail. In addition, the tool’s architecture enables thereuse of the visualization component in other debugging tools.  \nThe remainder of this paper is structured as follows. We describe the visual debugger tool in detail (section II) and outline a typical usage scenario (section III) before explaining the tool architecture (section IV) . Finally, we discuss related work in","cbCaidoyqJRUnfQW","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaidoyqJRUnfQW","pdf",338775,"English","# Introduction\n## Motivation for visual debugging\n# Tool Description\n## Parts list model and graphical representation","[{\"question\":\"What problem does the Visual Debugger Tool address?\",\"answer\":\"It targets the high cost and time developers spend on software debugging and validation by helping them understand program execution more quickly during debugging.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the tool present program execution information?\",\"answer\":\"It visualizes execution information as an object diagram, showing how program data structures relate during runtime.\"},{\"question\":\"What makes the tool practical for developers using IntelliJ IDEA?\",\"answer\":\"It is fully integrated into IntelliJ IDEA and complements the traditional textual debugger while offering interactive exploration of deeper execution details.\"}]","The Visual Debugger Tool | PDF",13]