This paper describes the design and implementation of a high-level visualization programming system called Viz. Viz was created out of a need to support rapid visualization prototyping in an environment that could be extended by abstractions in the application problem domain. Viz provides this in a programming environment built on a high-level, interactive language (Scheme) that embeds a 3D graphics library (Open Inventor), and that utilizes a data reactive model of visualization operation to capture mechanisms that have been found to be important in visualization design (e.g., constraints, controlled data flow, dynamic analysis, animation). The strength of Viz is in its ability to create non-trivial visualizations rapidly and to construct libraries of 3D graphics functionality easily. Although our original focus was on parallel program and performance data visualization, Viz applies beyond these areas. We show several examples that highlight Viz functionality and the visualization des...

this report is to look at interactions in Visualization User Analysis DataBase Fig. 1. Interactions between the user, Database, Visualization, and Ana lysis The components of scenarios in user interaction explored in the report database exploration, from a system and user perspective. The ultimate research goal is to effectively support user-data interactions in both the underlying data models and high-level data interfaces. The two primary focus areas are: 1. Interactions Between System Components - What are the system components, and how do they interact/communicate with each other? What are the duties and responsibilities of each component? What constraints must be considered to integrate the components? 2. Interactions Between User and System - What does the user interact with and how does the user interact with each system component? What additional constraints does the user impose on the system, or what constraints are placed on the user by the system? In this report we describe the system components and outline several research issues necessary to make the visualization component the interface to the analysis, database, and visualization. Figure 2 shows the user interacting directly with the visualization, which then acts as an intermediary to the other systems. This changes the user from being surrounded by many tools, to one using and interacting with a single tool, but managing the same sophistication of analysis, data-mining, knowledge discovery, and visualization. Visualization's effective human communication qualities enable it to play this important role.

The use of IRIS Explorer, a data visualisation toolkit, is described with reference to some examples from the fields of chemistry, computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis. Some of the new features in the latest version of the toolkit are highlighted, and its relationship to other technologies such as the NAG Fortran 77 library, Open Inventor and VRML are discussed in detail. Keywords: IRIS Explorer; Open Inventor; software re-use; VRML 1 Introduction The important role which visualisation plays in the interpretation of data has been recognised for a long time. Much progress has been made in academic research and industrial development towards the goal of producing modern data display software that is powerful, and yet easy to invoke, modify and extend. In this paper we discuss the use of IRIS Explorer, a data visualisation toolkit, in the analysis of scientific data, and outline the way in which it makes use of complementary software technologies in its architecture...