Besides the ever growing number of available multimedia database engines vendors are offering more powerful query and report tools to aid decision makers within a business context in accessing and presenting the information provided by an enterprise decision support systems. The capabilities for information presentation range from simple tabular to advanced multidetail reports with all types of graphs and charts. The automatic generation of complex presentations combining multiple media like text and business graphics relies on predefined templates. In addition, the interactive construction of presentations for ad-hoc reports is very well supported by such tools.
(New Dec. 96) The VisionDome is a novel interactive virtual reality environment, which enables group interaction around common data or a shared application. The product available from Alternate Realities Corporation constitutes the first portable theater that delivers interactive, fully immersive, 3D virtual reality to 10 or more people simultaneously without requiring them to wear head-mounted displays, goggles or special glasses. Projecting 360x180 degrees around a group of viewers, the VisionDome creates a strong auto-stereoscopic effect, which causes particpants to perceive 3D and to feel completely immersed in the virtual environment. Multiple VisionDomes can also be integrated to work over the network in order to support collaborative design and decision-making across multiple sites.
The article by Walker et al. [1996] reports on the experience gained from utilizing the VisionDome for collaborative VR applications at BT Laboratories (British Telecom).
(New Feb. 97) Visual Numerics, Inc. - headquartered in Houston, TX, USA - recently announced the availability of WoW! (WAVE-on-Web), a set of Web-enabling tools for the visual data-analysis software system PV-Wave. WoW! , which is available at no charge, provides extensions for the PV-Wave decision support software tool to distribute visual data analysis applications, including 3D visualization technology, over the Internet. A key feature of the product is the transformation of raw graphical and numerical data into high-quality, full-color images. The graphical capabilities of the powerful data visualization environment comprise a full suite of graphical routines for displaying virtually anything from 2D, 3D and 4D plots and contours to geographic maps and volume visualization.
(New May 97) The administration of a complex IT environment requires integrated enterprise-wide data, system, application and network management solutions in order to ensure availability, reliability, and performance of business-critical applications. Sophisticated application management tools offer a global administrative view of the entire application process and provide automated monitoring and management support with regard to important issues like performance optimisation, event management, service level management, capacity planning and fault management. Administrator consoles equip the operator with a powerful user interface for access to and control over the entire systems environment. Aiming at real-time decision support for system operators the provision of administrative information constitutes a salient aspect. Hence, an application management utility needs to serve as a comprehensive information-gathering tool.
A new approach followed in novel products like PATROL from BMC Software, Inc. and Compuware Corporation 's EcoTOOLS is the use of agent technology. Intelligent autonomous agents monitor activity independent of the management station. These agents discover the environment, continuously survey related systems, detect problems, initiate alarms and corrective actions, and thus can provide intelligent access to relevant information on demand. This improves information presentation in the graphical management console (using multiple media like text, graphics, and animation) since the competences of the intelligent agents can easily be exploited for selecting and accessing relevant information.
(New Dec. 97) The CAVE and the ImmersaDesk , two leading virtual reality tools originally created by scientists at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago are now being commercialized through the US company Pyramid Systems, Inc. .
Consisting of rear-projected screen walls and a front-projected floor, the CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) is a multi-person, high resolution, 3-D graphics video and audio environment. Using special stereoscopic glasses inside a CAVE , the user is fully immersed. Images appear to float in space, with the user free to move around them, yet maintain a proper perspective.
The ImmersaDesk is a revolutionary, drafting-table style, projection-based virtual reality tool which provides a semi-immersive virtual reality experience. Wearing special glasses, a user can look into the ImmersaDesk 's screen to see, hear and touch a computer-generated 3-D image that is simulated with near-perfect accuracy. The size and position of the rear-projected screen give a sufficiently wide-angle view and the ability to look down as well as forward.
The ImmersaDesk and CAVE utilize sensors to track head, hand and other body movements in real time, readjusting perspective on a continuous basis. Both use stereo LCD shutter glasses for left eye/right eye views. These innovations translate into images that are more realistic.
(New Jan. 98) Its RTworks product family makes California-based Talarian Corporation a leading vendor of advanced development tools for building complex, distributed real-time systems that implement high-performance scientific and technical applications. RTworks is now beeing used in more and more industries including, transportation, aerospace, finance, process control, utilities and telecommunications.
To make quick decisions from large volumes of data is quite often a typical requirement in the context of complex mission-critical software systems. Rapid transformation of this data into useful information constitutes a key issue within real-time applications since end users of these systems are constantly challenged by the amount of data which must be quickly analyzed to make the most cost-effective decisions. Talarian's RThci module is a dynamic graphical user interface builder which provides a flexible, easy-to-use mechanism for the developer to display changing information to the end user. Animated graphs, icons, widgets and text are used to provide an accurate representation of the system as data and other critical information change over time. Graphical rules allow the developer to specify actions that are to be associated with an object based on the end user's interaction with the object or other changing application data. The RThci point-and-click development environment even allows end users to develop and modify screen presentations. With over 70 predefined graphs, widgets, and drawings, dynamic displays of high speed information can be customized to focus the operators on the most critical and relevant data for more accurate decision making and greater understanding of events.
(New Feb. 98) Toronto-based Visible Decisions Inc. (VDI) specializes in the development of 3D interactive business visualization tools and solutions that are used by business experts to build and deploy business visualization components for data mining and decision support applications. Finance, oil and gas, marketing, telecommunications, and government constitute key markets for VDI products and services. Information visualization software products offered by VDI include In3D , VizIT/In3D , and Discovery for Developers . Visible Decisions In3D is a toolset for constructing interactive 3D applications and consist of a high-level, cross-platform C++ library and an interactive builder tool. Its visualization API is a very powerful framework for displaying 2D or 3D representations of data with support for interaction and manipulation of the underlying data model. Thus it provides a much higher level of abstraction than existing 3D application programmer interfaces. In3D natively supports VRML 2.0 as a geometry file format and allows applications to be deployed on the World-Wide Web as well. The new developer toolkit VizIT/In3D is specifically designed for use with ActiveX hosting development tools, like for example Visual Basic. A further product called Discovery for Developers offers a special 4GL (fourth-generation language) and framework for constructing dynamic 3D information visualizations. In particular, the framework provides support for acquiring, processing, modifying and visualizing information from many data sources including real-time feeds, SQL databases and analytical engines. Real-time decision support applications can also benefit from using alerts for real-time exception notification.
(New March 98) Another player in the advanced data visualization marketplace is Belmont Research Inc. , a company based in Cambridge, MA, USA. The two primary data visualization products offered by Belmont Research are CrossGraphs , a multidimensional data visualization and graphical reporting tool, and CG++ , an advanced graphical programming development environment. With CrossGraphs a user can simultaneously explore huge amounts of complex data by displaying statistical graphics partitioned across selected dimensions. The system output consists of a series of graphs as a combined presentation which can be exploited to better understand data relationships and to spot trends and patterns that either would not be found by looking at single, simple charts or would require an excessive effort using traditional graphing tools. The product CG++ is a cross-platform object-oriented programming language and integrated development environment for building graphical software. This data visualization programming language is appropriate for cases which require specialized visualization graphics. The powerful tool set can be used to create customized graphic visualizations for decision-support systems which let users visualize and interact with complex information intuitively and consistently. CG++ is sold as a standalone rapid application development environment, and it is also included in the CrossGraphs customization option as the CrossGraphs extension language.
(New Aug. 98) VRML , the Virtual Reality Modeling Language, is facing strong competition through alternative technologies in support of 3D multimedia and shared virtual worlds over the World-Wide Web. Chromeffects and MetaStream 3D are two novel technologies which aim to simplify the creation of 3D content and improve its performance over the Internet.
Microsoft Corp. has announced Chromeffects as an add-on media enhancement to the Microsoft Windows operating system. This new technology is designed to optimize the performance of multimedia content on the Web by using XML tagging to access Windows' multimedia capabilities. Employing XML , developers will be able to easily describe and deliver multimedia content and dynamically manipulate this content using simple scripting techniques. Developers can also publish the same Chromeffects multimedia content on DVD, CD-ROM, and the Web, which enables them to leverage the development process without writing medium-specific content. A specific advantage of Chromeffects is its ability to integrate 3D content with HTML and dynamic HTML. The full Chromeffects feature set is scheduled for release in early 1999.
MetaStream 3D is a new 3D file format announced jointly by MetaCreations Corp. and Intel Corp. . It provides a scalable 3D presentation format that can be played over a hard drive, a CD-ROM, or the Internet. MetaStream 3D permits the streaming of 3D objects across all platforms without a special server and also adjusts to available bandwidth and CPU power. Microsoft Corp. has licensed MetaStream 3D for possible use in future operating systems.