BUSINESS OBJECTS TOOLS FOR ADVANCED VISUALIZATION

Visualize and Explore Hierarchies and Relationships

With StarTree, you can visualize and explore large hierarchies, networks, and relationships in your applications, including call centers, security and network monitoring, portals, Web sites, business intelligence, human resources, and military intelligence.

StarTree, also known as Hyperbolic Tree, enables you to link files, documents, and Web pages across applications and network boundaries. Whether you're displaying entity relationships revealed by SAP BusinessObjects Text Analysis, monitoring networks, or navigating extensive information hierarchies, StarTree is a robust, time-tested, easy-to-integrate visualization tool that includes a powerful array of application program interfaces (APIs) for either Java or .NET environments.

StarTree gives software vendors and government contractors a competitive edge by providing a superior way to visualize large numbers of objects and complex relationships while speeding time-to-market.

Features

StarTree features include:

• Hyperbolic geometry – Achieve a smooth blending between focus and context, as well as continuous redirection of the focus.
• Point and click – Manipulate your focus through pointer clicks as well as interactive dragging.
• Flexible display
  • Present data as a hierarchical tree with or without directed graph elements (cross-linkages).
  • Localize trees with full Unicode support for international character sets.
  • Disable and enable various mechanisms for navigating and showing graph connections.
  • Select from multiple tree layout styles.
  • Automatically control inter-node distance.
  • Animate a tree with moving nodes and links.
  • Automatically expand or collapse nodes according to their position in the tree.
• Interactive and programmatic control
  • Implement interactive control through the user interface.
  • Delete or move subtrees to new parents.
  • Add children or subtrees.
  • Reorder nodes.
• Graphical representation and animated transitions
  • Control animations with a time-based governor and distance-based transitions.
  • Animate transitions between different layouts.
  • Use a built-in mechanism to display feedback tips near nodes.
  • Include visual variables such as icons, thumbnails, and spotlights.
  • Display quantities using thermometers and proportional wafers.
  • Use the bookmarking feature to place various views of the structure so users can move quickly between different views.
  • Use a client-driven standard painter to control the graphical attributes of the overall view, nodes, and links – including color, text, font, spotlight, and line control.
  • Edit background patterns, shading, and images.
• Node loading and unloading – Manage memory by loading nodes on-demand and freeing up memory when nodes go out of view.

Technical Details

Version: 3.1 Product Editions: Metadata Management System. Also available in VizServer License Model: User-based.

System Requirements

Java API (Version 3.1): Pentium or higher (or Mac/UNIX/etc. equivalent), 133 MHz or faster. At least 32 MB RAM. Java compiler compatible with JDK 1.1 or 1.4. .NET Control API: Pentium or higher, 133 MHz or faster. At least 32 MB RAM. Windows 2000, 2003. Any development environment compatible with .NET Supported Operating Systems and Compilers: Solaris 8, 9 with GNU C++2.95.2 Windows 2000, 2003, XP (latest service packs only) with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 RedHat Linux ES 3.2 on Intel with GNU C++2.95.2

Spot Relationships and Analyze Trends in Tabular Data

TableLens is an advanced way to visualize large amounts of tabular data. Borrowing from the spreadsheet model but taking it light-years further, TableLens displays record-oriented data in columns and rows, showing up to 1,000 rows and 50 columns – without scrollbars and without obscuring any data – and filling the cells with scaled and colored horizontal bars.

Using column sorting, grouping, and spotlighting, you can easily identify trends, correlations, and outliers. You can also use TableLens as a presentation and reporting tool.

Sample Uses

Sample uses for TableLens include:

• Viewing financial portfolio characteristics or stock characteristics for many portfolios at the same time
• Investigating crime and epidemic patterns
• Correlating adverse effects, efficacy by genomic component, and other pharmaceutical data

Features

TableLens features enable you to:

• Leverage existing applications – Easily integrate TableLens into a wide variety of applications.
• Clearly view data – Show up to 1,000 rows and 50 columns without scrollbars and without obscuring any data points.
• Explore data
  • Sort by clicking on columns.
  • Rearrange columns by dragging-and-dropping.
  • Promote columns to create subgroups.
  • Focus by clicking on a cell or by clicking and dragging to focus a whole row or multiple rows.
  • Filter subsets to create smaller, more specific datasets.
  • Spotlight data (rows and columns) to track particular information as you sort.

Technical Details

Version: 3.1 Product Editions: TableLens SDK for Java or .NET, Also available in VizServer License Model: User-based.

System Requirements

Java API (Version 3.1): Pentium or higher (or Mac/UNIX/etc. equivalent), 133 MHz or faster. At least 32 MB RAM. Java compiler compatible with JDK 1.1 or 1.4. .NET Control API: Pentium or higher, 133 MHz or faster. At least 32 MB RAM. Windows 2000, 2003. Any development environment compatible with .NET Supported Operating Systems and Compilers: Solaris 8, 9 with GNU C++2.95.2 Windows 2000, 2003, XP (latest service packs only) with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 RedHat Linux ES 3.2 on Intel with GNU C++2.95.2

Experience Revolutionary Three-Dimensional Timeline Visualization

TimeWall revolutionizes timeline visualization, providing a richness of physical experience that can't be represented in standard project planning and timeline tools.

TimeWall makes it possible for you to discern patterns over long time horizons, while enabling you to direct your focus on a particular time segment of interest. Using filters, you can narrow down information, based on any combination of structured information, including numeric and geographic.

While typical time tools are static, inflexible, and ill-suited for displays of large quantities of information, TimeWall displays time on a living, three-dimensional "wall." By placing relevant data at their fingertips, it empowers analysts to make faster, more informed decisions and empowers users to better state their cases in court or in presentations.

Sample Uses

Sample uses for TimeWall include:

• Uncovering new business opportunities or threats by monitoring events and news
• Revealing potential mergers and acquisitions or partnership activity
• Better defending your market space by monitoring patterns of competitors' analyst and press coverage over time
• Tracking financial activities over time between several organizations and companies

Features

TimeWall features include:

• Application integration – Easily integrates into a variety of applications, from counter-terrorism applications to legal applications and beyond.
• Data display – Displays numeric data (dates) on the horizontal axis and categories (locations, people, companies) on the vertical axis.
• Cards for timeline exploration – Cards represent individual events, and a stretch property can be set to dynamically narrow the data range. Numeric data can be as fine-grained or broad as the underlying data supports. Cards make it possible for you to manage your exploration of the three-dimensional wall in a variety of ways:
• Cards can be color coded (for example, e-mails can be green; contracts signed can be purple).
• Cards can support photos or icons.
• Spotlighting on cards shows search results.
• Cards can be filtered by being made invisible.
• Structured data supported by the cards can be used as criteria for filtering.
• Tooltips can be used to display additional card information.
• Double-clicking on a card launches the associated URL in a browser window.
• Clicking on a card scrolls the wall to center the card.
• Clicking on the wall centers the wall at the point it was clicked.
• A stretch property can be set to dynamically narrow the data range.

Technical Details

Version: 1.2 Product Editions: TimeWall. Also available in VizServer. License Model: User-based.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows XP Professional, Windows 2003 JDK versions: 1.1, 1.3, 1.4 Recommended browsers: Internet Explorer 6.0 and Netscape 7.x

Dynamically Explore Relationships, Trends, and Timelines

VizServer enables you to dynamically explore relationships and networks, trends, and timelines made visible with the StarTree, TableLens, and TimeWall interfaces. VizServer makes it simple to set up visual information environments for analysis without burdening your IT department with custom software development and complex application management challenges.

VizServer creates real-world value from your information assets by placing relevant information at the fingertips of employees, customers, and partners with an easy-to-digest visual interface. It is ideal for information-intensive applications in research and development, channel and customer management, government analysis, or for virtually any user group working with large collections of structured and unstructured data.

With VizServer, you can quickly map to data sources and then sift through and locate information and patterns in hierarchical, relational, tabular, or time-based data sets using the StarTree, TableLens, and TimeWall interfaces.

Features

VizServer features include:

• User-friendly wizards – Easy-to-use wizards for connecting data to StarTree, TableLens, and TimeWall visualizations, as well as easy administration with wizard-based publication of visualization modules
• Connectivity – Connects to any JDBC-compliant database, including Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and Sybase
• Embedded crawler – Embedded crawler automatically maps information from file systems and Web sites
• Web-based, J2EE-compliant – Web-based, J2EE-compliant enterprise application that publishes Java applets to Web pages
• Security – Leverages existing security mechanisms for access control to enterprise information
• Customizable – Optional software developer kits enable the creation of custom applets
• Flexible scheduler – Flexible scheduler permits real-time updates of visualizations

Technical Details

Product Editions: VizServer Data Sources: Connects to any JDBC compliant database including Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and Sybase. License Model: User-based

System Requirements

Operating Systems: Sun Solaris 8, 9, Windows Intel XP/2000/2003, Red Hat Linux Enterprise 3, IBM AIX 4.3.3