We present the design and prototype implementation of a scientific visualization language called Zifazah for composing 3D visualizations of diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI or DTI) data. Unlike existing tools allowing flexible customization of data visualizations that are programmer-oriented, we focus on domain scientists as end users in order to enable them to freely compose visualizations of their scientific data set. We analyzed end-user descriptions extracted from interviews with neurologists and physicians conducting clinical practices using DTI about how they would build and use DTI visualizations to collect syntax and semantics for the language design, and have discovered the elements and structure of the proposed language. Zifazah makes use of the initial set of lexical terms and semantics to provide a declarative language in the spirit of intuitive syntax and usage. This work contributes three, among others, main design principles for scientific visualization language design as well as a practice of such language for DTI visualization with Zifazah. First, Zifazah incorporated visual symbolic mapping based on color, size and shape, which is a sub-set of Bertin's taxonomy migrated to scientific visualizations. Second, Zifazah is defined as a spatial language whereby lexical representation of spatial relationship for 3D object visualization and manipulations, which is characteristic of scientific data, can be programmed. Third, built on top of Bertin's semiology, flexible data encoding specifically for scientific visualizations is integrated in our language in order to allow end users to achieve optimal visual composition at their best. Along with sample scripts representative of our language design features, some new DTI visualizations as the running results created by end users using the novel visualization language have also been presented.
The Protovis specification language @cite_5 is a declarative domain-specific language (DSL) that supports specification of interactive information visualizations with animated transitions, providing an approach to composing custom views of data using graphical primitives called marks that are able encode data by dynamic properties, which is similar to the mapping of object properties to graphical representations in another InfoVis language presented by Lucas and Shieber @cite_23 . To some extent, both languages are comparable to the Microsoft's ongoing project Vedea aimming at a new visualization language @cite_8 in terms of syntactic design and programming style, although its design goals are closer to that of Processing.
@cite_5 @cite_23 @cite_8
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We investigate the design of declarative, domain-specific languages for constructing interactive visualizations. By separating specification from execution, declarative languages can simplify development, enable unobtrusive optimization, and support retargeting across platforms. We describe the design of the Protovis specification language and its implementation within an object-oriented, statically-typed programming language (Java). We demonstrate how to support rich visualizations without requiring a toolkit-specific data model and extend Protovis to enable declarative specification of animated transitions. To support cross-platform deployment, we introduce rendering and event-handling infrastructures decoupled from the runtime platform, letting designers retarget visualization specifications (e.g., from desktop to mobile phone) with reduced effort. We also explore optimizations such as runtime compilation of visualization specifications, parallelized execution, and hardware-accelerated rendering. We present benchmark studies measuring the performance gains provided by these optimizations and compare performance to existing Java-based visualization tools, demonstrating scalability improvements exceeding an order of magnitude. While information visualization tools support the representation of abstract data, their ability to enhance one’s understanding of complex relationships can be hindered by a limited set of predefined charts. To enable novel visualization over multiple variables, we propose a declarative language for specifying informational graphics from first principles. The language maps properties of generic objects to graphical representations based on scaled interpretations of data values. An iterative approach to constraint solving that involves user advice enables the optimization of graphic layouts. The flexibility and expressiveness of a powerful but relatively easy to use grammar supports the expression of visualizations ranging from the simple to the complex. In this paper a logic-based specification language, called NP-SPEC, is presented. The language is obtained by extending DATALOG through allowing a limited use of some second-order predicates of predefined form. NP-SPEC programs specify solutions to problems in a very abstract and concise way, and are executable. In the present prototype they are compiled to PROLOG code, which is run to construct outputs. Second-order predicates of suitable form allow to limit the size of search spaces in order to obtain reasonably efficient construction of problem solutions. NP-SPEC expressive power is precisely characterized as to express exactly the problems in the class NP. The specification of several combinatorial problems in NP-SPEC is shown, and the efficiency of the generated programs is evaluated. Data Stream Management Systems (DSMS) have attracted much interest from the database community, and extensions of relational database languages were proposed for expressing continuous queries on data streams. However, while relational databases were built on the solid bedrock of logic, the same cannot be said for DSMS. Thus, a logic-based reconstruction of DSMS languages and their unique computational model is long overdue. Indeed, the banning of blocking queries and the fact that stream data are ordered by their arrival timestamps represent major new aspects that have yet to be characterized by simple theories. In this paper, we show that these new requirements can be modeled using the familiar deductive database concepts of closed-world assumption and explicit local stratification. Besides its obvious theoretical interest, this approach leads to the design of a powerful version of Datalog for data streams. This language is called Streamlog and takes the query and application languages of DSMS to new levels of expressive power, by removing the unnecessary limitations that severely impair current commercial systems and research prototypes.