Improving visualization interactivity in Java
C. Weaver, Miron Livny · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2000
An ongoing challenge for visualization researchers is to create tightly coupled dynamic query interfaces that response quickly and smoothly to user interaction, regardless of the amount of data or the complexity of the display. Our solution is to follow a simple philosophy: during user activity, maintain the quality of visual context at the expense of visual content by reducing the impact of expensive visualization operations on interactivity. Our interactive visualization strategy splits finite computational resources by giving the user interface whatever resources it needs to maintain interactivity, and giving the data system whatever remains; user interface optimizations increase resources left for the data system, and data system optimizations make the best use of leftover resources. In this paper we describe three techniques that implement this strategy. First, we use a family of techniques called throttling to moderate the execution of queries and renders. Second, we improve refresh speed by elimination several unnecessary, graphically-intensive operations. Third, we preprocess and render data into bitmaps using an asynchronous imaging engine. Using these techniques, we have increased the speed and smoothness of interface navigation in our visualization framework even during expensive query and render operations.