Hierarchical difference scatterplots interactive visual analysis of data cubes

ABSTRACT

Data cubes as employed by On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) play a key role in many application domains. The analysis typically involves to compare categories of different hierarchy levels with respect to size and pivoted values. Most existing visualization methods for pivoted values, however, are limited to single hierarchy levels. The main contribution of this paper is an approach called Hierarchical Difference Scatterplot (HDS). A HDS allows for relating multiple hierarchy levels and explicitly visualizes differences between them in the context of the absolute position of pivoted values. We discuss concepts of tightly coupling HDS to other types of tree visualizations and propose the integration in a setup of multiple views, which are linked by interactive queries on the data. We evaluate our approaches by analyzing social survey data in collaboration with a domain expert.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)

Keywords:
OLAP, data cubes, focus+context visualization