Systematic application of circle-similar shapes to visualize database-homogeneity in a Big Data environment

Abstract

Creating a useful visualization of database-homogeneity in a big data environment contains the task to present the underlying data in a perceivable way to the human observer. This paper provides a deep insight into the results of a research project commissioned by Crate Technology GmbH, where the before mentioned task was tackled by using a modified method of radar charts. A novel visualization tool to observe database-homogeneity was created with the aim to integrate it into the UI of the massive scalable elastic SQL Data store developed by Crate. The results of the formative usability test of this tool showed that the principle is understood intuitively by almost all test subjects already during the first task without any briefing about how to identify the problematic state of the single nodes of the database cluster. The results showed that this tool is expedient to visualize database-metadata in a big data environment.