Tioga: Providing Data Management Support for Scientific Visualization Applications
Michael R Stonebraker, Jolly Chen, Nobuko Nathan, Caroline Paxson, Jiang Wu · 1993
We present a user interface paradigm for database management systems motivated by scientific visualization applications. Our graphical user interface includes a "boxes and arrows" notation for database access and a flight simulator model of movement through information space. We also provide means to specify a hierarchy of abstracts of data of different types and resolutions. In addition, multiple portals on data may be related as master and slaves. The underlying DBMS support for this system includes the compilation of query plans into megaplans, new algorithms for data buffering, and provisions for a guaranteed rate of delivery. 1 Introduction Scientific visualization applications often deal with data objects of very large sizes. Examples include large regular arrays such as those found in global circulation models[Mech91] as well as in remote sensing applications[Dozi89]. Also prevalent are large data structures modeling roads, drainage networks, vegetation patterns, etc. that are...