A comparative study on modular visualization environments

Modular Visualization Environment (MVE) systems constitute a particular class of Visualization Packages. They are not visualization programs, but rather environments to build visualization applications, accordingly to specific needs of data representation. It is now clear that MVE belong to the class of general purpose Visualization Packages, because this is the main property that characterize them. From the end-user point of view, MVE are extemely versatile and flexible. In many cases, setting up a personalized representation of data simply consists in interconnecting in a network a number of pre-existing modules with atomic functionality, creating the specific visualization pipeline that ends with the rendering of the data. The longer is the list of available modules, the bigger is the number of different visualization applications the user can build in the MVE. The following MVEs are reviewed in this document: Application Visualization System (AVS), by Advanced Visual Systems Inc., Data Explorer, by IBM Inc., and IRIS Explorer, by NAG Ltd.

@TechReport{LG97b,
  author       = {Leone, A. and Gobbetti, E.},
  title        = {A comparative study on modular visualization environments},
  institution  = {CRS4, Center for Advanced Studies, Research, and Development in Sardinia},
  number       = {97/65},
  month        = {october},
  year         = {1997},
  address      = {Cagliari, Italy},
  note         = {idxproject: CFD2},
  type         = {techreport},
  url          = {https://publications.crs4.it/pubdocs/1997/LG97b},
}