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Polaris: a system for query, analysis, and visualization of multidimensional databases

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Pat HanrahanAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 51, Issue 11

Pages 75 - 84

https://doi.org/10.1145/1400214.1400234

Published: 01 November 2008 Publication History

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Abstract

During the last decade, multidimensional databases have become common in the business and scientific worlds. Analysis places significant demands on the interfaces to these databases. It must be possible for analysts to easily and incrementally change both the data and their views of it as they cycle between hypothesis and experimentation.

In this paper, we address these demands by presenting the Polaris formalism, a visual query language for precisely describing a wide range of table-based graphical presentations of data. This language compiles into both the queries and drawing commands necessary to generate the visualization, enabling us to design systems that closely integrate analysis and visualization. Using the Polaris formalism, we have built an interactive interface for exploring multidimensional databases that analysts can use to rapidly and incrementally build an expressive range of views of their data as they engage in a cycle of visual analysis.

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Published In

cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 51, Issue 11

Remembering Jim Gray

November 2008

122 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/1400214

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 01 November 2008

Published in CACM Volume 51, Issue 11

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3695550
Liu LVuillemot RRivière PBoy JTabard A(2024)Generalizing OD Maps to Explore Multi-dimensional Geospatial DatasetsThe Cartographic Journal10.1080/00087041.2024.232519161:1(49-68)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
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DeValk KElmqvist N(2023)Riverside: A design study on visualization for situation awareness in cybersecurityInformation Visualization10.1177/1473871623118922023:1(40-66)Online publication date: 17-Aug-2023
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