VEM 2014 - 2nd Workshop on Software Visualization, Maintenance, and Evolution

The continuing need to keep (i.e., identifying and correcting defects and improving the quality of the internal code) and development (i.e., adding new features) software systems is a major challenge in modern software engineering. Several studies show that activities related to software evolution or maintenance have been responsible for a considerable cost on the development process, reaching in some cases, 90% of the total cost.
The interest for software evolution and maintenance has been intensified in recent years, face to the pressure for a shorter time between the development and to release new software versions on the market. Another factor that has contributed to increase investment in software evolution and maintenance activities is the frequent advent of new execution environments (i.e., Web computing, ubiquitous computing and cloud computing), new development paradigms (i.e., Aspect-Oriented Software Development - AOSD and Service-Oriented Architecture - SOA) and new types of access (i.e., from mobile devices tablets, gestural interfaces, etc.).
Before performing any evolution and maintenance, however, is fundamental to understand the software to be modified. Software comprehension is not a trivial task. It involves complex cognitive processes and may consume in some cases, up to 50% of the total maintenance time.
Software Visualization is a subarea of Information Visualization and Software Engineering, which makes use of visual resources to facilitate software comprehension, either through the analysis of a single version system or your entire version history.
Although there is a clear intersection of issues and research challenges involving areas of Software Visualization, Evolution and Maintenance, until recently these areas were the focus of two separate events organized by Brazilian Software Engineering community, usually in different places and dates.