Data visualization on web-based OLAP

Abstract

A web-based OLAP client typically runs inside a generic browser on a web-based, resource-constrained device. Currently, this client is responsible for only delivery of what is rendered by the OLAP server. A functional prototype of a client-centric OLAP system is built, which features a customized middleware on the server side and a web client incorporating a lightweight, in-memory OLAP data/query engine. We develop three interactive data visualization tools that run against the data engine on the client side. Our experimental results show that in comparison to the traditional server-centric model, our client-centric OLAP model is clearly superior and capable of delivering a higher level of user satisfaction. A novel technique is presented for in-client aggregation over a large set of data items represented in a scatter plot. © 2011 ACM.