Visualization-Panel for Provenance Data

Kurzfassung

Today’s IT-systems are becoming more difficult. Their relationship together grows as well as their complexity. Currently a main requirement is for people to trust more in the results and have a better understanding of the functionality. Provenance as a technical idea is a good approach for comprehending the operation of an IT-system. It will record every occurring event and its associated parts. With understanding it is possible to have a way for tracing decisions and data transformation in the system to understand the outcome of it. The Provenance idea is currently a research field. One of the involved institutes is the German Aerospace Center. The department “Simulation and Software Technology” is interested in the ongoing Provenance approach. A present research theme, covered by this bachelor thesis, is the visualization of the Provenance data and therefore the evaluation of possible interpretation approaches. Additionally, the software architecture for this Visual Information Seeking System is questioned. The bachelor thesis is divided into three main phases. The first one is an analysis the Provenance data itself as well as the user and their requirements regarding the Provenance system. The second deals with the creation of visualization-concepts for the Provenance data. The complete software architecture was developed in the last main phase. The final results consist of the outcome of all three main phases of the project as well as a final evaluation of them. At first, the analysis of the fundamental data and the user requirements were made to create an initial assertion about visualization possibilities. The analysis is divided between different intentions of the user regarding the Provenance data and their allocation to general visualization types. These general first assertions were the basis for the final visualization-concepts, developed in main phase 2. A visualization map, dividing the concepts into different detail level and scope size, gives the overall view about the visualization possibilities. The concepts describe the transformation of the raw data to the final view with respect to the reference model for visualization. General concepts like the representation legend, system-wide techniques or the concept of the mental map are considered as well as the elaboration of each individual one depending on its place in the visualization map. The individual build-up, its behavior and its behind algorithm is shown. Finally, the concepts were evaluated to have a first statement of their profitability, but also their limitations. In main phase 3, the developed system architecture of the visualization-panel is developed in a component-based approach. The architecture is independent of the programming-language and describes a general implementation strategy. Just as well as the visualization-concepts, it is also a kind of generic nature. A concrete implementation of both results forces the need for the evaluation of concrete properties of the field of application.