Author Archives: Chris Chedgey

Beautiful Structure

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In response to O’Reilly’s just-published Beautiful Code, Johnathan Edwards explains why he couldn’t go along with the premise. One sentence in his excellent piece stood out for me: “The human mind can not grasp the complexity of a moderately sized … Read More

Spring Framework 2.1 M3 Architecture

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Here are some architecture diagrams for Spring Framework 2.1 M3 (released yesterday). You can point the (free) structure101 plug-in at these and get IDE warnings if your customizations break Jeurgen’s architecture. Here is the top level breakout of org.springframework: Structure101 … Read More

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Code Organization Guidelines for Large Code Bases

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In an excellent on-line presentation Juergen Hoeller gives rationale and guidelines for controlling the structure of large, evolving code-bases. Juergen is the chief architect of the Spring framework, which as I have previously pointed out is structurally almost perfect. This … Read More

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Structure101 Supports Java 1.5

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We have overhauled the byte-code parser to now pick up Java 1.5 constructs (e.g. generics and annotations), plus it is much faster. You can download the first build that includes the new parser here. If you currently use the structure101 … Read More

Martin Fowler – the design pseudo-graph

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How much effort should you put into contolling the structure of your code-base? A nice article by Martin Fowler. "The problem with no-design, is that by not putting effort into the design, the code base deteriorates and becomes harder to … Read More … Read More

Eclipse Plugin (OSGi) Visualization

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If you are going mad trying to figure out the dependencies between lots of Eclipse plug-ins, or work with other large OSGi systems, you may be interested in this. We’ve had a few people looking for an Eclipse/OSGi backend for … Read More

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Jar Hell

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A lot of jars can contribute to (and mask) the logical package/class structure. Here’s how to make sense of the whole mess using Structure101.1. View your project in the Logical hierarchy2. Tag the classes or packages you’re interested in3.  Switch … Read More

DevX review of Structure101

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"Getting your arms (and eyes) around large, complex code bases has never been easy, but Structure101 from Headway Software may just be the elegant solution to this age-old problem. Find out how this visual design tool analyzes your enterprise projects … Read More … Read More

Complexity Debt – don’t “fix it”, “keep a lid on it”

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So you just discovered that your code-base has racked up a whole load of complexity debt. This  maybe explains why progress seems so painfully slow lately. You briefly think of suggesting a major complexity-reducing refactoring effort. This will delay the … Read More

Structure101 v2 goes GA today

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Additions let you see complete slices of a code-base at any level, home in on structural complexity, view dependency graphs in matrix form, and map code items and groups (like tangles) through different hierarchies, slices and perspectives (learn more or … Read More