The paper presents a set of tools that work in conjunction to support concept location in software. One of the tools, IRiSS (Information Retrieval based Software Search), is a search engine, designed and implemented to allow searching the source code of a software system. The other tool, sv3D (source viewer 3D), is a visualization front end, designed to represent software data with 3D renderings.The two tools are integrated with MS Visual Studio, with IRiSS providing the infrastructure for indexing the source code and querying, while sv3D helps the user in visually navigating the results of the queries and keeps track of the navigation path.

The paper presents a new approach to source code exploration, which is the result of integrating the Google Desktop Search (GDS) engine into the Eclipse development environment. The resulting search engine, named Google Eclipse Search (GES), provides improved searching in Eclipse software projects. The paper advocates for a component-based approach that allows us to develop strong tools, which support various maintenance tasks, by leveraging the strengths of existing frameworks and components. The development effort for such tools is reduced, while customization and flexibility, to fully support user needs, is maintained. GES allows developers to search software projects in a manner similar to searching the Internet or their own desktops. The proposed approach takes advantages of the power of GDS for quick and accurate searching and of Eclipse's extensibility. The paper discusses usage scenarios, advantages, limitations, and possible extensions of the proposed tandem