P ORTOLAN: a Model-Driven Cartography Framework

TL;DR

Portolan is a model-driven framework that simplifies the complex process of data visualization by providing a structured approach to discover, define, and transform data for visualization tools, validated across multiple use cases.

Contribution

It introduces a generic, model-driven approach for data visualization that streamlines the transformation process within the Eclipse EMF framework.

Findings

Successfully implemented on Eclipse EMF

Validated on three different use cases

Facilitates data discovery and transformation

Abstract

Processing large amounts of data to extract useful information is an essential task within companies. To help in this task, visualization techniques have been commonly used due to their capacity to present data in synthesized views, easier to understand and manage. However, achieving the right visualization display for a data set is a complex cartography process that involves several transformation steps to adapt the (domain) data to the (visualization) data format expected by visualization tools. To maximize the benefits of visualization we propose Portolan, a generic model-driven cartography framework that facilitates the discovery of the data to visualize, the specification of view definitions for that data and the transformations to bridge the gap with the visualization tools. Our approach has been implemented on top of the Eclipse EMF modeling framework and validated on three different use cases.