Visualization Databases for the Analysis of Large Complex Datasets

VDBs, already successful just with off-the-shelf tools, can be greatly improved by a rethinking of all areas of data visualization in the context of a database of many large displays.

Abstract

Comprehensive visualization that preserves the information in a large complex dataset requires a visualization database (VDB): many displays, some with many pages, and with one or more panels per page. A single display using a specific display method results from partitioning the data into subsets, sampling the subsets, and applying the method to each sample, typically one per panel. The time of the analyst to generate a display is not increased by choosing a large sample over a small one. Displays and display viewers can be designed to allow rapid scanning. Often, it is not necessary to view every page of a display. VDBs, already successful just with off-the-shelf tools, can be greatly improved by research that rethinks all of the areas of data visualization in the context of VDBs.