[11] DejaVU Online: Principles of Object-Oriented Software Development (©)
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So many users, so many perspectives

Instructor's Guide

intro, objects modeling, simulation, visualization, legacy summary, Q/A, literature
The title of this section is from an article,  [Perspectives]. It is meant to express that visualization must be flexible in order to accommodate the individual user's information needs. Originally, visualization was primarily used for the analysis of scientific data, resulting from measurements or some physical model. Nowadays, visualization is increasingly applied to non-scientific data, for better understanding of the contents and the relations between the data. In business data visualization there is not necessarily a physical model underlying the data. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to visualize the data in order to explore structural patterns and temporal relations.

slide: In3D architecture

The In3D toolkit,  [In3D], provides an object-oriented framework for the visualization of business data. It is based on the Model--View--Control paradigm, and provides the functionality to define data models or containers, observers for these models, mappings to transform the data to be displayed, a variety of views to display the data, sensors and controllers to create interactive applications, and frames and viewers for displaying visualizations on the screen. The In3D toolkit is built on OpenGL and allows for VRML import and export. An overview of the In3D architecture is given in slide in3d-arch.

Interaction -- visualization
slide: User interaction
Creating an effective visualization may be quite demanding. First of all, one has to make the choice for an appropriate metaphor. Basically, the choice is between a literal metaphor, such as the geographical metaphor used in slide 3d-usa, or an abstract metaphor, such as a data cube or an abstract topology. Next, it is important to organize the data, and to find suitable visual primitives to display the data content and the inherent relationships of the data. Finally, user interaction capabilities must be added, to allow for explorative behavior and drill down. See slide interact.

Available systems

 The In3D toolkit (http://www.vdi.com) was one of the first around for business data visualization. Recently, a number of VRML-based visualization kits have been introduced (for example http://www.em7.com and http://www.platinum.com).

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Hush Online Technology
hush@cs.vu.nl
12/30/99