This animated graphic of an OpenViz example demonstrates the user's ability to select a region of the top graph and drag it to observe real-time correlative changes on the lower graph. This applet illustrates the relationship between vehicle MPG and horsepower; note how a numeric MPG value changes above the lower graph as the user interacts with the chart. Click here for a downloadable demo of OpenViz.

Table of Contents

• Standards-Based Development
• Accelerated Visualization Development
• Visual User Interface
• Context-Sensitive and Highly Interactive Pictures
• Robust, Scalable Chart and Graph Components
• Manipulating Data with OpenViz Component
• OpenViz Zero Administration Client Deployment
• OpenViz Offers Developer Productivity Gain
• Summary of Key OpenViz Features and Benefits
• Conclusion
• About Advanced Visual Systems
  

  
  

Accelerated Visualization Development

OpenViz accelerates a developer's ability to create sophisticated graphical features by leveraging AVS's experience in visualization technology.

Using Visual Basic, Java, or C++, developers can easily create interactive graphic displays that take advantage of the full range of hardware available in the market today.

Through its adherence to standards, OpenViz enables developers to simultaneously deliver excellent interactive performance; manage large quantities of data; and adhere to the architectures, practices and standards of well-designed software. OpenViz attributes and properties can be set or modified as required without knowledge of their implementation.

Visual User Interface

Users continue to demand better user interfaces that make software easier to learn, improve productivity, and enable them to gain new insights and understanding of key business metrics. By improving the interface, developers can dramatically shorten the "time to enlightenment."

A software "user interface" today is not merely a screen design and a menu layout, but also a method of interacting with the application and its data. When users describe the "look and feel" of applications, they refer to traditional graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The "look" refers to the physical appearance on the screen, whereas the "feel" refers to the way the user interacts with the underlying application and data. A GUI makes an application look attractive and easier to use, but it does not alter the fundamental way users work with massive numerical data.

The "Visual User Interface" is a new method of enabling the user to take a more active role in the process of visualizing and investigating data. The most revolutionary difference between a traditional GUI and VUI is that users interact directly with the on-screen graphics and the data behind the graphics without having to work with traditional GUI controls such as pull-down menus, dialogs, or slider bars. In VUI applications, the aim is to create a data-centric view in which the user responds to and interacts with the actual visual presentation of the data on the screen – not menus, commands, or other "modes" for preparing data for presentation.

With a VUI, the on-screen graph, chart, or data representation is central to your focus. The on-screen data object is "live"– the object itself includes underlying data structures and properties, not merely a reporting window. The sense of immediacy and speed-of-thought interaction helps users make better business decisions.

VUI-based applications enable the user to directly manipulate graphical objects that respond interactively and immediately to the user’s input actions. The user interacts in both 2D and 3D space (using a pointing device) with an immediate graphical feedback response, without the need for moving to a secondary menu window. The interactive components in OpenViz are designed for the development of VUI based applications.

Context-Sensitive Highly Interactive Pictures

OpenViz-enabled applications come alive with interaction. Clicking on a visible part of the picture causes it to present additional information, perhaps forming a new database query. The picture becomes the interface.

Any mouse interaction, such as making a selection, panning, zooming, or rotating is fully configurable by the application developer. Data access, processing, filtering, and presentation are coordinated to efficiently update the view.

For instance, clicking on a pie chart can explode the segment, scroll-bars can be linked to data axes, and data can be selected by drawing a closed path around objects.

Robust, Scalable Charting and Graphing

OpenViz’s rich collection of charting and graphing technologies provides interactive visualization for both data discovery and presentation-quality graphics. The comprehensive technical axis system serves as the foundation for a variety of graph types. Multi-dimensional data is displayed using 2D or 3D charts, graphs, scatter diagrams, carpet plots and map-based visualizations. Legends and annotations, when combined with charts, create fully featured and readable data presentation, producing high-quality graphics for the application.

Manipulating Data with OpenViz

The ability to quickly implement high-quality graphics in an application often depends on data access. OpenViz dramatically simplifies the task of accessing data.

The data access and manipulation techniques are used to make data from a database query into a format suitable for graphical representation. OpenViz offers a flexible data access system so that data visualization is possible without any changes to the data source. The data access facilities support many common data sources. The COM implementation accepts data from the Microsoft Data Access Objects, including ODBC, ADO, DAO and RDO, each of which can be connected directly to OpenViz application. The Java implementation accepts data from many sources, including JDBC and other Java enabled database systems. Additionally, data already generated or refined in memory by applications can be directly accessed by OpenViz COM.

Data processing and filtering techniques help organize and process data for visualization. Common operations such as binning (data reduction), sorting, and aggregation are available to achieve a highly interactive response. They treat each part of the input like a single database record whose different data items are contained in the data structure. These records can be classified into bins based on any dimension. The resulting structure corresponds to these bins, and can be used as a pivot table. Further filtering, thresholding, or cropping techniques can be added to create sophisticated data selection mechanisms.

OpenViz Zero Administration Client Deployment

OpenViz carries virtually no costs for administering client machines, meaning Web developers can focus on their applications – not deployment issues.

Specifically, the OpenViz Viewer can be deployed to all major browser environments on Windows 95, 98, NT and 2000, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x and 5.x, and Netscape Navigator 4.06+, 5.x. The application verifies that the required version of the OpenViz Viewer is installed properly on the client machine. If the correct version of OpenViz Viewer is not present, the application walks the user through a simple one-time download/plug-in process to OpenViz-enable their PC. All the necessary pieces are authenticated by VeriSign.

OpenViz Offers Developer Productivity Gain

OpenViz offers significant gains in developer productivity. Used in combination with off-the-shelf IDEs, OpenViz greatly reduces the complexity and effort required to develop high-quality applications that feature interactive business visualization. AVS provides visualization technology to support development efforts by providing numerous benefits:

• High-quality presentation graphics raise your company’s product to the highest standards.
• High-quality hard-copy facility produces journal or poster-quality graphics.
• The OpenViz "Scene Tree" provides the ultimate flexibility to structure your visual presentation.
• OpenViz takes full advantage of high-performance multimedia desktop systems, leveraging capital investment and the latest hardware technology.

• OpenViz shields the developer from tedious and complex event handling, simplifying the task of developing interactive applications.
• Full support for direct manipulation in the graphics window, including drag, scrollbar, rotate, zoom, pick, and more, empowers users to explore their data.
• Tying mouse clicks to queries with OpenViz allows you to create sophisticated and powerful applications without intermediate data translation.

• A rich set of data access, manipulation, graphing, and graphics display technologies with fine-grain control allows precise matching to user requirements and corporate product identity.
• OpenViz provides a comprehensive set of charts, graphs, and visualization tools for application customization.
• OpenViz provides a uniform platform that allows customization and growth, as your needs evolve.
• OpenViz can be used with many development environments, without needing to re-train your development staff.
  

Conclusion

As the industry leader in data visualization, AVS has a wealth of experience and knowledge from which to draw. With OpenViz, AVS has applied the best of its visualization, graphing and charting technology to create a world-class visualization architecture for business data.

OpenViz provides a platform that enables development teams to stay ahead. At each software generation, key graphical presentation elements can be reused and refined, becoming a major leverage point. Sophisticated data interaction, presentation styles, and the processing of large data sources are clearly separated from user interface, packaging, and numerical models, extending the lifetime of the application architecture.

OpenViz provides robust graphics and visualization technology based on more than 15 years experience, giving you the ability to leverage market-proven technology and enabling developers to incorporate state-of-the-art visualization into business applications. With improved information access, presented in visual user interfaces, users can make better business decisions.

About Advanced Visual Systems

Advanced Visual Systems Inc. (AVS) is the preeminent global provider of sophisticated data visualization technology that transforms massive and complex quantities of data into visual representations. The company provides solutions for developers who build customized visualization software, as well as ready-to-use applications for end users who analyze information contained in graphical representation.

More than 12,000 users in 2,000 organizations around the world use AVS technology to gain insight and competitive advantage from data. They look to AVS to reduce development costs, incorporate industry standards, and speed time to market. For more information on AVS, call 1-800-728-1600, e-mail info@avs.com or visit the AVS Web site at: http://www.avs.com.