Visual Analysis for Authors: Pat Hanrahan Stolte Jock Mackinlay January, 2007 UNDERSTANDING DATA data at the speed-of-thought. Three problems must be addressed: EXPLORATION AND ineffective information presentations, VISUALIZATION poor exploratory capabilities, and Although visual interfaces and databases are two of difficult user interfaces. the success stories of the computer revolution, their This whitepaper describes how Tableau Software synergy to date has been modest, probably because solves these problems with a declarative visual query visual interfaces have focused on human capabilities language (VizQL) that simultaneously describes how while databases have focused on efficient query to query data and how to present it visually. The result processing. Unlocking this synergy will shift us from is a fundamentally new way of interacting with data workers to data thinkers, people who can use databases and spreadsheets. Software products based on VizQL can be used for tasks that range from
Visual Analysis for Authors: Pat Hanrahan Stolte Jock Mackinlay January, 2007 UNDERSTANDING DATA EXPLORATION AND VISUALIZATION Although visual interfaces and databases are two of the success stories of the computer revolution, their synergy to date has been modest, probably because visual interfaces have focused on human capabilities while databases have focused on efficient query processing. Unlocking this synergy will shift us from data workers to data thinkers, people who can use data at the speed-of-thought. Three problems must be addressed: ineffective information presentations, poor exploratory capabilities, and difficult user interfaces. This whitepaper describes how Tableau Software solves these problems with a declarative visual query language (VizQL) that simultaneously describes how to query data and how to present it visually. The result is a fundamentally new way of interacting with databases and spreadsheets. Software products based on VizQL can be used for tasks that range from
visual-analysis-for-everyone3.docx