3D Data Visualization Components on the Web-Results from AVS’s Involvement in Several EC Esprit Research Projects

Abstract

With the increasing use of electronic documents on the Web, the opportunity to provide interactive data visualization techniques within scientific and engineering reports has become practicable, This evolution of Web-based visualization components allows the author of a report to distribute a Word or Excel document with embedded 3D data visualization viewers. Answering the call is a new realm of data exploration tools called Knowledge Management (KM). This is a process that provides technology to address the challenge of discovering and exploiting information. KM applications are improving the decision-making capabilities of companies by performing spatial and multivariate visual data analysis and providing rapid access to comprehensible information. This chapter examines the visualization tools and issues needed by most businesses - how to turn their data into knowledge and make this knowledge accessible to persons who rely on it. The role of information visualization techniques and the visual user interface in the overall knowledge management process is assessed. The objective of the EC-funded CONTENTS project is to develop customizable application components for the interactive visual analysis of data within the KM process. The data of interest are large multivariate business-related data sets generated in a distributed and heterogeneous environment. The visualization components will be based on the emerging industry-standard ActiveX/DCOM architecture, and will be properly ``bridged{''} towards CORBA-based architectures for multi-platform portability and compatibility. CONTENTS will help to improve European awareness of object-oriented component technology in a distributed environment based on the industry standard DCOM. Industrial partner Unilever will drive the KM project with its pragmatic practical user needs. Industrial partners AMS, AET and Intecs will provide their high-tech competence and experience in data reduction and visualization, image processing and management, multi-platform component design and reengineering. The integration of data warehousing, spreadsheet, information visualization, Web and new visual interaction techniques will change and expand the paradigms of current work of humans using computers. Knowledge management will improve visual communication that takes place in all elements of the user interface and provide decreased ``time-to-enlightenment{''}.