An Interactive Visual Query Environment for Exploring Data

Direct manipulation of visualizations is a powerful technique for performing exploratory data operations such as navigation, aggregation, and filtering. Its immediacy facilitates rapid, incremental, and reversible forays into the data. However it does not provide for reuse or modification of exploration sessions. This paper describes a visual query language, VQE, that adds these capabilities to a direct manipulation exploration environment called Visage [14,16]. Queries and visualizations are dynamically linked: operations on either one immediately update the other, in contrast to the feedforward sequence of database query followed by visualization of results common in traditional systems. These features are supported by the architectural concept of threads, which represent a sequence of navigation steps on particular objects. Because they are tied to particular data objects, they can be directly manipulated. Because they represent operations, they can be generalized into queries. We ..

An Interactive Visualization Environment for Data Exploration

Exploratory data analysis is a process of sifting through data in search of interesting information or patterns. Analysts' current tools for exploring data include database management systems, statistical analysis packages, data mining tools, visualization tools, and report generators. Since the exploration process seeks the unexpected in a data-driven manner, it is crucial that these tools are seamlessly integrated so analysts can flexibly select and compose tools to use at each stage of analysis. Few systems have integrated all these capabilities either architecturally or at the user interface level. Visage's information-centric approach allows coordination among multiple application user interfaces. It uses an architecture that keeps track of the mapping of visual objects to information in shared databases. One result is the ability to perform direct manipulation operations such as drag-and-drop transfer of data among applications. This paper describes Visage's Vis..

Interactive Graphic Design Using Automatic Presentation Knowledge

We present three novel tools for creating data graphics: (1) SageBrush, for assembling graphics from primitive objects like bars, lines and axes, (2) SageBook, for browsing previously created graphics relevant to current needs, and (3) SAGE, a knowledge-based presentation system that automatically designs graphics and also interprets a user's specifications conveyed with the other tools. The combination of these tools supports two complementary processes in a single environment: design as a constructive process of selecting and arranging graphical elements, and design as a process of browsing and customizing previous cases. SAGE enhances userdirected design by completing partial specifications, by retrieving previously created graphics based on their appearance and data content, by creating the novel displays that users specify, and by designing alternatives when users request them. Our approach was to propose interfaces employing styles of interaction that appear to support graphic d..

A Framework for Knowledge-Based, Interactive Data Exploration

In this paper, we propose a framework that combines the functionality of data exploration and automatic presentation systems to create a knowledge-based, interactive, data exploration system. The purpose of a data exploration system is to enable users to uncover and extract relationships hidden in large data sets. The purpose of an automatic presentation system is to reduce the need for users and application developers to have graphic design expertise and to spend much time interacting with graphics packages to view their data. Previous work on data exploration was limited to query mechanisms that were often complex to learn and difficult to use, data manipulation mechanisms that did not provide complete coverage of the operations needed by users (especially the ability to form ad hoc groupings of data), and graphics that were restricted to a small set of predefined visualizations. Automatic presentation research, although addressing these issues, has been limited to the display of sma..

An Interactive Visualization Environment for Data Exploration

Exploratory data analysis is a process of sifting through data in search of interesting information or patterns. Analysts' current tools for exploring data include database management systems, statistical analysis packages, data mining tools, visualization tools, and report generators. Since the exploration process seeks the unexpected in a data-driven manner, it is crucial that these tools are seamlessly integrated so analysts can flexibly select and compose tools to use at each stage of analysis. Few systems have integrated all these capabilities either architecturally or at the user interface level. Visage's information-centric approach allows coordination among multiple application user interfaces. It uses an architecture that keeps track of the mapping of visual objects to information in shared databases. One result is the ability to perform direct manipulation operations such as drag-and-drop transfer of data among applications. This paper describes Visage's Visual Query Language and visualization tools, and illustrates their application to several stages of the exploration process: creating the target dataset, data cleaning and preprocessing, data reduction and projection, and visualization of the reduced data. Unlike previous integrated KDD systems' interfaces, direct manipulation is used pervasively, and the visualizations are more diverse and can be customized automatically as needed. Coordination among all interface objects simplifies iterative modification of decisions at any stage

ABSTRACT A FRAMEWORK FOR KNOWLEDGE-BASED, INTERACTIVE DATA EXPLORATION

In this paper, we propose a framework that combines the functionality of data exploration and automatic presentation systems to create a knowledge-based, interactive, data exploration system. The purpose of a data exploration system is to enable users to uncover and extract relationships hidden in large data sets. The purpose of an automatic presentation system is to reduce the need for users and application developers to have graphic design expertise and to spend much time interacting with graphics packages to view their data. Previous work on data exploration was limited to query mechanisms that were often complex to learn and difficult to use, data manipulation mechanisms that did not provide complete coverage of the operations needed by users (especially the ability to form ad hoc groupings of data), and graphics that were restricted to a small set of predefined visualizations. Automatic presentation research, although addressing these issues, has been limited to the display of small data sets. This research has also not developed approaches to combine interactive, user-directed processes of design and data manipulation with automatic presentation mechanisms. We propose a framework that overcomes these limitations of current data exploration systems and integrates new interactive capabilities with automatic presentation components. This approach to supporting data exploration integrates recent work on SageTools, an environment for interactive and automatic presentation design, with a prototypical interactive data manipulation system called IDES. In this paper, we present our work on the IDES data manipulation capabilities and discuss requirements for coordinating them with automatic presentation of large data sets

An Interactive Visual Query Environment for Exploring Data

Direct manipulation of visualizations is a powerful technique for performing exploratory data operations such as navigation, aggregation, and filtering. Its immediacy facilitates rapid, incremental, and reversible forays into the data. However it does not provide for reuse or modification of exploration sessions. This paper describes a visual query language, VQE, that adds these capabilities to a direct manipulation exploration environment called Visage. Queries and visualizations are dynamically linked: operations on either one immediately update the other, in contrast to the feedforward sequence of database query followed by visualization of results common in traditional systems. These features are supported by the architectural concept of threads, which represent a sequence of navigation steps on particular objects. Because they are tied to particular data objects, they can be directly manipulated. Because they represent operations, they can be generalized into queries. We expect this technique to apply to direct manipulation interfaces to any object-oriented system that represents both objects and the relationships among them