Abstract
Visualization is an important technology for analyzing large amounts of data. However, the process of creating meaningful visualizations is quite difficult. The success of this process depends heavily on a good mapping of objects present in the application domain to objects used in the graphical representation. Both kinds of objects possess several attributes. Whereas data objects have attributes of certain types (e.g. integers, strings) graphical objects are characterized by their appearance (shape, color, size, etc.). In our approach, the user may map arbitrarily data attributes to graphical attributes, leading to a great flexibility. In our opinion, this is the only possibility to achieve a really generic approach. To evaluate our ideas, we developed a tool called ProViS. This tool indicates the possible attributes of data objects as well as graphical objects. Depending on his goals, the user can then 'connect' (freely) attributes of data objects to attributes of their graphical counterparts. The structure behind the application objects can be worked out very easily with the help of various layout algorithms. In addition, we integrated several mechanisms (e.g. ghosting, hiding, grouping, fisheye views) to reduce complexity and to further enhance the three-dimensional visualization. In this paper, first of all we take a look at the basic principle of visualization: mapping data. Then we present, ProViS, a visualization tool implementing our idea of mapping.
Published Version
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