REPRESENTATION OF DATASETS USING VIEW-SPECIFIC VISUAL BUNDLERS

• US 20150324453A1
• Filed: 05/09/2014
• Published: 11/12/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SAP SE
• Original Assignee: Horst Werner
• Inventors: WERNER, Horst
• Granted Patent: US 9,710,430 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/26 Visual data mining; Browsing structured data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/282 Hierarchical databases, e.g. IMS, LDAP data stores or Lotus Notes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/287 Visualization; Browsing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/103 Formatting, i.e. changing of presentation of documents automatic justification G06F40/189; automatic line break hyphenation G06F40/191
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/186 Templates

Abstract

A request handler may receive a request for a visualization of plurality of data elements, the request including a common property. A property filter may filter the plurality of data elements based on the common property, to obtain data subsets, and a template selector may access grouping criterion linking the common property with at least one layout template providing a geometric representation of the common property. A layout engine may then generate, based on the at least one layout template, a plurality of visual bundlers, each visual bundler corresponding to a data subset of the data subsets, and may display the visual bundlers, each illustrating its corresponding data subset, to thereby provide the visualization in a manner that conveys the common property and a relationship of the data subsets to one another in the context of the common property.

Claims

1. A system including instructions recorded on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, and executable by at least one processor, the system comprising:

a request handler configured to cause the at least one processor to receive a request for a visualization of plurality of data elements, the request including a common property;

a property filter configured to cause the at least one processor to filter the plurality of data elements based on the common property, to obtain data subsets;

a template selector configured to cause the at least one processor to access grouping criterion linking the common property with at least one layout template providing a geometric representation of the common property; and

a layout engine configured to cause the at least one processor to generate, based on the at least one layout template, a plurality of visual bundlers, each visual bundler corresponding to a data subset of the data subsets, and further configured to display the visual bundlers, each illustrating its corresponding data subset, to thereby provide the visualization in a manner that conveys the common property and a relationship of the data subsets to one another in the context of the common property.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the request handler is configured to cause the at least one processor to execute the request against a database to retrieve the data elements.

3. The system of claim 1, being further configured to destroy the visual bundlers and re-group the data elements using a second plurality of visual bundlers, in which the layout engine is configured to cause the at least one processor to generate, based on at least a second layout template linked to the second common property by the grouping criterion, the second plurality of visual bundlers, each illustrating a corresponding second data subset, to thereby provide a second visualization in a manner that conveys the second common property and a second relationship of the second data subsets to one another in the context of the second common property.

4. The system of claim 1, comprising a template repository storing the plurality of layout templates, including the at least one layout template, wherein the plurality of layout templates are stored in a hierarchical structure in which layout templates are embeddable within one another at each level of the hierarchical structure.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein, within each visual bundler, each data subset is further grouped according to a second common property, and, for each visual bundler, the layout engine is configured to cause the at least one processor to generate, based on at least a second layout template, an embedded plurality of visual bundlers, each of the embedded plurality of visual bundlers corresponding to a further data subset of the included data subset, and further configured to display the embedded visual bundlers within each visual bundler.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the embedded visual bundlers are recursively regrouped within the visual bundlers, according to a third common property.

7. The system of claim 1, being further configured to magnify the embedded visual bundlers, including retrieving data to be displayed therein from a database in response to the data reaching a data threshold, and prior to the data reaching a visual threshold at which rendering of the data is initiated.

8. The system of claim 1, further comprising an aggregator configured to cause the at least one processor to aggregate, for each visual bundler, data values of the included data subset for display thereof in conjunction with the corresponding visual bundler.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the layout engine is configured to determine a position and size of each visual bundler, relative to remaining visual bundlers, based on data values of the data subsets of each visual bundler.

10. A computer-implemented method for executing instructions stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, the method comprising:

receiving a request for a visualization of plurality of data elements, the request including a common property;

filtering the plurality of data elements based on the common property, to obtain data subsets;

accessing grouping criterion linking the common property with at least one layout template providing a geometric representation of the common property;

generating, based on the at least one layout template, a plurality of visual bundlers, each visual bundler corresponding to a data subset of the data subsets; and

displaying the visual bundlers, each illustrating its corresponding data subset, to thereby provide the visualization in a manner that conveys the common property and a relationship of the data subsets to one another in the context of the common property.

11. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

destroying the visual bundlers and re-grouping the data elements using a second plurality of visual bundlers, including

generating, based on at least a second layout template linked to the second common property by the grouping criterion, the second plurality of visual bundlers, each illustrating a corresponding second data subset, to thereby provide a second visualization in a manner that conveys the second common property and a second relationship of the second data subsets to one another in the context of the second common property.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the at least one layout template is stored within a plurality of layout templates within a template repository, and wherein the plurality of layout templates are stored in a hierarchical structure in which layout templates are embeddable within one another at each level of the hierarchical structure.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein, within each visual bundler, each data subset is further grouped according to a second common property, and further including

generating, based on at least a second layout template, an embedded plurality of visual bundlers, each of the embedded plurality of visual bundlers corresponding to a further data subset of the included data subset, and

displaying the embedded visual bundlers within each visual bundler.

14. The method of claim 13, further including recursively regrouping the embedded visual bundlers within the visual bundlers, according to a third common property.

15. A computer program product, the computer program product being tangibly embodied on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and comprising instructions that, when executed by at least one computing device to, are configured to cause the at least one computing device to:

receive a request for a visualization of plurality of data elements, the request including a common property;

filter the plurality of data elements based on the common property, to obtain data subsets;

access grouping criterion linking the common property with at least one layout template providing a geometric representation of the common property;

generate, based on the at least one layout template, a plurality of visual bundlers, each visual bundler corresponding to a data subset of the data subsets; and

display the visual bundlers, each illustrating its corresponding data subset, to thereby provide the visualization in a manner that conveys the common property and a relationship of the data subsets to one another in the context of the common property.

16. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the instructions, when executed, are further configured to cause the at least one processor to:

destroy the visual bundlers and re-group the data elements using a second plurality of visual bundlers, and

generate, based on at least a second layout template linked to the second common property by the grouping criterion, the second plurality of visual bundlers, each illustrating a corresponding second data subset, to thereby provide a second visualization in a manner that conveys the second common property and a second relationship of the second data subsets to one another in the context of the second common property.

17. The computer program product of claim 15, comprising a template repository storing the plurality of layout templates, including the at least one layout template, wherein the plurality of layout templates are stored in a hierarchical structure in which layout templates are embeddable within one another at each level of the hierarchical structure.

18. The computer program product of claim 17, wherein, within each visual bundler, each data subset is further grouped according to a second common property, and, for each visual bundler, and based on at least a second layout template, an embedded plurality of visual bundlers is generated, each of the embedded plurality of visual bundlers corresponding to a further data subset of the included data subset, to thereby display the embedded visual bundlers within each visual bundler.

19. The computer program product of claim 18, wherein the embedded visual bundlers are recursively regrouped within the visual bundlers, according to a third common property.

20. The computer program product of claim 15, wherein the instructions, when executed, are further configured to cause the at least one processor to:

magnify the embedded visual bundlers, including retrieving data to be displayed therein from a database in response to the data reaching a data threshold, and prior to the data reaching a visual threshold at which rendering of the data is initiated.