Information visualization: from petroglyphs to CoDe Graphs

2016 - 2017Data visualization concerns the communication of data through visual representations and techniques. It aims at enhancing perception and support data-driven decision making so enabling insights otherwise hard to achieve. A good visualization of data makes it possible to identify patterns and enables better understanding of phenomena. In other words, data visualization is related to an innate human ability to quickly comprehend, discern and convert patterns into useful and usable information. Humans have used visual graphical representations as early as 35.000 B.C., through cave drawings. Indeed, human ancestors already reasoned in terms of models or schemata: the visual representation of information is an ancient concept, as witnessed by the rock carvings found. Over the centuries, information visualization has evolved to take into account the changing human needs and its use has become more and more conscious. The first data visualization techniques have been developed to observe and represent physical quantities, geography and celestial positions. Successively, the combined use of euclidean geometry and algebra improved accuracy and complexity of information representation, in different fields, such as astronomy, physics and engineering. Finally, in the last century most modern forms of data representations were invented: starting from charts, histograms, and graphs up to high dimensional data, and dynamic and interactive visualizations of temporal data [41]. Nowadays, the huge amount of information enables more precise interpretation of phenomena so fostering the adoption of infographic techniques, in particular, for supporting managerial decision-making in the business area... [edited by author]XVI n.s

Abstract A product-line approach to database reporting

Reporting for analysis is a common demand to database programmers. Unlike dynamic data analysis, reporting tend to be foreseeable. Despite this fact, staff waste their time programming similar reports time and again, where reports are often built from scratch with little if any reuse at all. Based on the predictability and similarity among reports, this work presents a product-line approach to database reporting. The feature model, core assets and production plan of the product line are sketched, and the architecture discussed. The work was conducted under a main requirement: data warehouse technology was not available. Either the cost or the lack of appropriate staff makes small-and-medium companies reluctant to use these sophisticated tools while simple reporting is all they need. In this scenario, the product-line approach can be a cost-effective solution to achieve reuse.