The Application Of Visualization In Operating System Education

Operating System is one of the most important subjects in computer field, not only because it is the manager of the computer system, but also it builds the bridge which connects users and computer hardware, offering the user a convenient and effective platform. It has become one of the most active sciences in computer field nowadays. It is of great significance in the development of computer science and technology application. However, it is the vast intricacy and the functional complexity that makes us confronted with many difficulties in the learning and research of the Operating System. Because its operating principle involves many dynamic and abstract concepts and mechanisms, conventional theoretical study can only brings us vacuous information, making the comprehension of it come into deviation and lack of wholeness.For the past few years, visualization technology has developed fast. Practice has proved it is bringing great impact to Operating System instruction. If we can introduce visualization technology into the field of Operating System education and research and reveal its working mechanism visually and dynamically, the students and the researchers will have a good grasp of the principles of Operating Systems more quickly, accurately and roundly.At the present day, a number of examples have been set to introduce visualization into Operating System education field, but most of them use the emulator to simulate the working process of Operating Systems and output the results so they are not real operating system running environment. Some researches on existing platform system is based on Linux, such as LTT. Windows is widely used in normal life, but it can not be further studied because there is no access to free and open source code. In addition, few convenient visualization research tool aimed at Windows is available.The research kernel WRK (Windows Research Kernel) released to universities and research institutes by Microsoft affords best material for operation system research. This paper uses real Windows Resources Toolkit as research environment, modifies, compiles the source codes of Windows again and visualizes it, visually and dynamically shows Windows's operational process in image and graphics.The main points presented in this paper focus on the research of operation system education and the analysis of the present situation, features and weakness of the application of visualization technology. The design and implementation method of running visualization in real Windows is given in this paper. The main work is showed as follows:1. Modify kernel source code of Windows, compile it again, run it and obtain the running procedure data of Windows, then preprocess the collected information and use the collected data as raw material for kernel analysis.2. Obtain the running data of Windows Operating System, with the visualization technology, to show the collected data in image and graphics, visually and dynamically demonstrate the operating process of Windows kernel.Results show that the visualization method discussed in this paper will help the students understand the operating mechanism of Windows kernel more visually and more roundly. The method has a positive impact on Operating System education and it may have much more profound meanings if further investigated and developed.