Abstract

Distributed programs are harder to analyse and understand than sequential programs for the following reasons. First, a distributedprogram consists of many entities in di#erent levels of abstractions. Second, communication among the entities of a distributed program may happen concurrently and nondeterministically. Tobe able to analyse these entities and the communication events among these entities is therefore an essential task for understanding any distributed programs. This paper describes a tool for assisting the analysing and understanding of distributed programs. The tool analyses the entities and communication event of a distributed program in four abstraction levels. In the highest level, the tool displays the communication relationships between programs (eg, server and client programs). In the second level, the communication between processes is displayed. In the third level, the communication between events is displayed. The fourth level is the lowest level: it uses a te...

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