This fragility in the code structure would likely have caused a maintenance overhead as Spring Security evolved, so the decision was made to restructure the code for the 3.0 release to give us a stable base for future development.

I'll plug the one commercial tool I've used extensively that doesn't appear on enough lists: Structure101. To me, this is the MUST HAVE tool if you're analyzing and restructuring a large, complex body of Object-Oriented software (and no, I don't work for them).

I was using IDEA and Eclipse to analyze the dependencies in my code. However, I now use Structure101 because it has way more in this area, all wrapped in an easy-to-use and understand interface.

Using Structure101 when performing code and architecture reviews is a real kick-start for our consultants. We can very quickly get a comprehensive overview of the structure of an application or framework and of its quality. With Structure101 in our toolbox we can help clients analyse and refactor their code-base into a consistent architecture with decreasing dependencies and better distribution of responsibilities. After such an activity, clients find their code-base easier and more cost efficient to maintain, change and enhance.

The initial licenses are in fact a first step for a larger roll out of this amazingly useful and powerful product, Structure101 reduced the overall schedule of one of our projects from 6 months to 3-4 weeks.

I have looked at pretty much all the open source and commercial tools and Structure101 is the best I have come across for figuring out dependency data.

I use Structure101 when I want to understand the overall structure of a system and evaluate potential changes. I appreciate its breadth, usability, and performance.

Structure101 - I've never had the need to look beyond for better.

Playing with a new version of #structure101 - love it for cleaning an architecture.

I really appreciated the Maven 2 integration -- it made getting going a breeze!

We chose Structure101 because of its rich feature set, it's unchallenged cost-benefit-ratio and last but not least because of the great support during the evaluation phase.

We have been using Structure101 for more than a year now and there is no doubt it has helped us maintain the high quality of our architecture.

For me, no Java project will be done without Structure101. I am promoting this to everyone who doesn't escape quickly enough!

Structure101 blew me away! I can't begin to tell you how many 'aha!' moments I was having ... everything from the cool way code trees are grouped into "partitions", to the various slices through the code, to the matrix view.

Our developers are realizing the value of Structure101. One good recent example - five teams started development simultaneously. After two months they realized that one team was developing much faster than the others. That team had deliberately used Structure101 from the beginning and that really paid off in terms of speed.

The guys at headwaysoftware.com are awesome; how many companies mail you back on a Saturday?

Tools exist for enforcing your architecture. Start today! No more "Word architectures"!

I find that the architecture diagrams are extremely useful for understanding a large codebase very quickly. It often unnerves the people I deal with at the bank -- they'll send me the code expecting me to take a couple of days to get to grips with the basic parts, and I will ring them up 30 minutes later discussing how they need to fix the code up.

I've used Structure101 for a couple of years now, and found it to be fantastic for getting a very good (and fast) overview of large systems. The architecture diagrams in particular show the automatic layering of 500kloc systems well.

The micro-architectural stuff (packages and classes) is also well catered for with the dependency diagrams. Worth its weight in gold.

I found the online Flash tutorials great to not only get familiar with the Structure101 concepts, but also to see some of the intent for how its designers envision it being used.

Structure101 continues to be a lifesaver!

Restructure101 makes it easy to fit a codebase to the architecture I want, Structure101 keeps it that way - it's as simple as that.

I've been extremely impressed with Structure101. I haven't been blown away by a Java application in a very long long time ... Structure101 blew me away!

Structure101 has proven very useful, we've mainly concentrated on the architectural model since this gave us the greatest gains.

I recently made major changes, removing unused functionality and products, and the collaboration perspective was used extensively. I highly recommend it to anyone else doing similar work. Paddling left and right was particularly useful. I saved a huge amount of manual work by using this perspective.

Structure101 has proved invaluable... It has excellent support for analysing the dependencies between components and identifying anomalous dependencies. I've really appreciated the support from the Structure101 developers who have helped me get the best out of the tool.

At first I thought a Structural Analysis tool was a 'nice to have' but as I use Structure101 its value has increased to the point where it's a 'must have', same as an IDE.

When you are busy implementing new features it’s easy for cyclic package dependencies to creep into the application. With Structure101 it was straightforward to identify the cycles and fix them.

Structure101 helped me manage the refactoring process with success. An easy to use program that not only provides insight for maintenance, but is the perfect tool to help design applications from scratch.

Wow, Structure101 for .Net is really cool :-) It's like the tool I was always looking for.

Structure101 for .Net rocks! Want to understand the structure of your app? Structure101 should be your first choice.

While our software system was growing larger and larger, every developer had some kind of overall architecture map in mind. But these differed and it was hard to introduce them to new developers.

Structure101 is exactly the tool we were looking for to make this map visible, agreeable and at the same time capable of expressing formal architecture rules.

Many thanks for this great product and the fast and professional support!

There's been a need for a product like Structure101 for a very long time. The ability you have to click through and navigate up and down the structure of the code base is both eye opening and addictive. I found the online Flash tutorials great to not only get familiar with the Structure101 concepts, but also to see some of the intent for how its designers envision it being used.

I wanted to mention that Structure101 is one of the best developer apps I have seen in a long while. Good job!

Structure101 is indispensable for understanding a system's architecture. In addition to providing great, simple code metrics, it excels at providing an intuitive way to visualize and navigate dependencies from major subsystems down to classes that is unmatched by any other tool we have used.

Structure101 has helped us dramatically improve our design by highlighting where we needed to remove bad or unnecessary coupling.

I was using Structure 101 all day today and rebuilt my new version of the SKB. Brilliant tool!

Structure101 analyzes codebases to elicit the kind of information that good developers hold in their head for small projects, great ones juggle for large projects, and only the likes of Richard Stallman and Bill Joy can master for enterprise-scale projects.

Teaching software architecture to students is difficult, IDEs like Eclipse only show class level details, and UML tools like Poseidon only show the desired structure at design time. Structure101 allows me to make visible what the students can't see otherwise and makes for an impressive learning experience. Especially the architecture diagrams which stick in the mind and get the user thinking in layers. I strongly recommend Structure101 for teaching purposes.

I, as a Fornax cartridge developer for the oAW code generation framework, naturally want to see if the generated code is well structured.

Structure101 is just the right tool to see results in a snap. It is an easy to use, easy-to-understand code analyzer.

No matter how big your code base is - with the help of this great tool - you can always check if you are going in the right direction.

A perfect tool that just gets the job done, keep up the superb work!

We have been using Structure101 on Junit and are very happy with the way it helps us keep the Junit architecture under control.

Your customer support is on par with your software, I love both!

I really could not live without Structure101. We have some automation built in to the project using JDepend to alert us when a cycle is introduced but the visualization with Structure 101 makes it so much easier to analyze and fix. I am a very happy customer!

I spent a bit of time setting up some architecture diagrams for the project (along with some transformations), which I found really simple and intuitive. The Structure101 GUI is slick, quick and offers great insight, I'm sure it'll be extremely valuable as time passes on!

Structure 101, the best tool I have found to get an overview of your system design/architecture.

I refactored a UI and application framework for JavaME, which had 45% XS when I started. It is now down to 0% and many bugs just magically disappeared. I would say that Structure101 was indispensable for this task.

The cost is easily saved when using Structure101 to get an overview of the structure of existing applications.

I would like to tell you that Structure101 is just what I needed!

With 2 big projects, over 50 developers and millions of lines of code, we were fighting with what we call jar-cancer, almost blindly using refactorings.

Structure101 is an X-ray device that allows us to identify dangerous cross-module calls ahead of time and helps us find solutions quickly.

I evaluated several alternatives, however Structure101 is truly superior in terms of performance and usability: it will be my privilege to use it.

@jridley I found this article by Structure101 absolutely fascinating. What an incredible tool. http://bit.ly/eEhys

I successfully used Structure 101 in my lectures. It really improved the students understanding of architecture.

I loaded our application code and in a matter of minutes I was blown away by the simplicity and the power of Structure101 to analyze the organization and design of your code.

I love the architecture diagram functionality. With it we are able to define our architecture standards and enforce them during design and construction. As a Chief Architect who is responsible for overall design and system architecture, this capability is a great value-added to an already fantastic product.

Overall, a nice piece of work to keep control of complexity. [...] A seriously amazing product!

Structure101 is not free, but it does it's job really well and at the time I can't think of a free alternative that would be just as good.

After evaluating all of the open source code complexity analysis tools, I found Structure101. Within a few minutes I could see the difference, seeing exactly where my cyclic package dependencies were, drilling down, and identifying the offending methods and classes. Simple as that.

Structure101 is fantastic! In a matter of minutes, you can pinpoint the packaging and dependency issues in your application. The ability to move Java classes around on-the-fly helps jump start refactoring exercises. If you're an architect working on an system of any size, Structure101 greatly simplifies controlling the integrity of your application.

Structure 101 is working out great for us. We have it plugged into our CI and it has saved us several times from making bad decisions. Since this was a greenfield project, we use it largely as a way to design and better structure our dependencies.

I downloaded Structure101 a few days ago and used it to analyze complex applications that I am working on. I found the tool very intuitive, easy to use and insightful. The Structure Guys did an awesome job!

We have used Structure101 for several years to ensure continuous architectural quality of the Java portion of our flagship application, LeaseAccelerator, despite rapid growth in features and functionality. With the release of Structure101g, we are now able to extend this quality process to our SQL and Javascript, ensuring proper partitioning and separation of concerns across all layers, regardless of implementation language.

Software evolution and maintenance are the purest forms of code entropy; with Headway's Structure101 products, we keep the creeping chaos at bay.

Our research would NOT have been possible without your help and guidance. Structure 101 is one of the best tool in its category. I am a proud user and fan of Structure101.

Headway provides a powerful way for programmers to visualize, understand, and address the OO code spider-web complexity problem head-on. This is easily the best software I have seen for this purpose.

Even in the short amount of time I've been able to spend learning Structure101 since downloading yesterday, I've already been able to gain tremendous insight about a number of my own large codebases. In a lot of ways, this program seems to be something I've been looking for literally for years.

Amazing tool. After every milestone I check my architecture with Structure101 and almost always I need to do refactoring after that.

I am a freelance Java developer and team lead with many different clients. I need to familiarize myself with the client's code bases in a really short time. I found myself constantly returning to Structure101 for that job. A few minutes with Structure101 shows me the architecture of the code and highlights the problem areas. So, finally, it seemed only fair to become a customer.

Structure101 has proved to be an outstanding product. It is particularly strong in reinforcing key packaging principles and its design lends itself very well to iterative development and extensive refactoring cycles.

I just bought a license for Structure101 today, it just does exactly what I was looking for.

Structure101 has a very effective, simple and intuitive interface. It has proved itself a great product at Readers Digest to help us understand and address design issues in our increasingly large systems.

I am a Java consultant, and Structure101 is one of the coolest tools I have ever seen. I have been wanting something like for this for a long time.

Structure101 is definitely a great product, it makes it so much easier to describe and explain architectures to outsiders or team members.

I'm absolutely impressed with Structure101, I only wish I found it a long time ago. Thanks for the tutorials, you guys managed to make these complicated concepts look easy.

I spent the last three weeks full time doing high-level refactoring and solving tangles. I did all of that with the Eclipse plugin "Metrics", with Structure101 I'm sure I would have done the same thing in one week.

Structure101 helped me get rid of some elusive thread-locking problems while allowing me to zero in and clean up the most poorly architected parts of our code.

Avantia, Inc. specializes in performing audits for clients with complex software systems. Avantia was able to replace six different software analysis tools with Headway. Headway also assisted by decreasing the time needed to generate analysis output from weeks to days.

Structure101 is exactly what a J2EE architect needs to audit the deployed system during development to catch nasty dependencies and take steps to put them right.

As a busy engineering manager, running multiple projects, I don't have time to do deep dives into the code. Structure101 gives me all the information I need about the integrity of the codebase at the touch of a button.

Structure101 is such a simple product to use and very affordable. I would say it's well suited to software practitioners who care about software quality. Everyone who writes code should be reviewing their code structure, at least on a weekly basis.

You guys have a kick-ass app. Whether I qualify for an open source license or not, I'm going to strongly recommend it anywhere folks need to understand and clean up large code bases.

We are very impressed with the latest release of Structure101. It has allowed us to improve the quality of the architecture reviews we do for our clients, but most importantly for them and us we have been able to achieve this in a shorter time frame.

My company has decided to start by buying a few licenses but I am sure more will follow since all developers I have demonstrated it to want it. I think it is the best developer tool I have seen since I found IDEA some 5 years ago.

I used Structure101 in several open source projects in my graduate research. It's been instrumental - from helping me to refactor complex software using design patterns to generating interesting metrics and models that visualize my code. These features only scratch the surface and I will consider Structure101 a must-have when working with Java software in the future.

I demonstrated Structure101 to the students of my software engineering course. They then did a lab with it. Cool tool, students liked it too! Now I will continue to use Structure101.

This is one of our most successful projects at Rolfe and Nolan. We were constrained by budget but Headway has enabled us to deliver more with less, and most importantly without any compromise in quality.

Headway provides excellent products for finding architectural flaws, particularly those that result from the evolution of large complex systems.

We purchased from Headway to reduce development costs and found that we improved developer productivity when doing code analysis by up to 50%. It also shortens the learning curve for new team members.

I would argue against using the term 'reverse engineering' for Headway . To me, reverse engineering is salvaging some sort of design from code. What Headway offers in my opinion is a visualization of the code itself. It just so happens to use reverse engineering techniques to achieve this - however this is arguably an implementation detail. UML reverse engineering 'may' offer to help discover the intent of the original designer, whereas Headway tells it like it is i.e. it provides an implementation view rather than merely an abstract design model.