The InfoVis Toolkit

Jean-Daniel FeketeINRIA Futurs/LRI, France

Jean-Daniel.Fekete@inria.frhttp://www.lri.fr/~fekete/InfovisToolkit

Goals

• Simplify the integration of Information Visualization techniques in Java/Swing applications

• Simplify the creation and experimentation of new visualization techniques

• Simplify the creation and experimentation of new interaction techniques

• Provide a support for teaching InfoVis• Provide a base for InfoVis student projects• Scales well in term of space and speed

Internal Structure• Data structures are composed of

Columns• Columns contain homogeneous data

– Contain metadata– Support notification– Support formatting for input and output– Support missing values– Efficient in speed and memory usage

• Data structures are based on tables– Attributes and topology explicitly

represented as columns– Trees

• Columns containing the parent, 1st child, next child, last child

– Graphs (two tables for vertices and edges)

• In vertex table: Outgoing edge list, ingoing edge list

• In edge table: next edge on outgoing list, next edge in ingoing, in and out vertices

WritersReaders

Table

Visualization

Col

umns

Met

adat

a

Vis

ual A

ttri

bute

s

Layout

Sha

pe C

olum

n

Rendering

Labeling

Picking

Fisheyes

Image

Components

Dyamic Queries Controls

Results

• Article at InfoVis 04 about the Toolkit and a user evaluation

• Technical report about performance issues

• Several projects– Monitoring of constraint-based systems– Software testing– Visualization of familiar data (new Desktop)

Problems

• Separation of concerns• Data structure for graphs is complex when scalability

and extensibility are required– Tulip has a good model

• When a good framework exists, implementing parts is long, tedious and hard– Visualizations (layouts)– Rendering (labels, arrow ends, arcs shapes)– Components for “magic-lenses” (Fisheyes, excentric labels)– Components for Dynamic Queries (sliders et al.)– Components to configure and control visualizations– Readers and writers

• Documentation …

Is there several ways to do it?

• Looking at implementations, 2 ways– The good old object oriented way– The column-oriented way

• The goals are the same for most projects– Same scales– Same platforms– Same languages (almost)

• Should I continue by myself?