Viz: A Visualization Programming System

This paper describes the design and implementation of a high-level visualization programming system called Viz. Viz was created out of a need to support rapid visualization prototyping in an environment that could be extended by abstractions in the application problem domain. Viz provides this in a programming environment built on a high-level, interactive language (Scheme) that embeds a 3D graphics library (Open Inventor), and that utilizes a data reactive model of visualization operation to capture mechanisms that have been found to be important in visualization design (e.g., constraints, controlled data flow, dynamic analysis, animation). The strength of Viz is in its ability to create non-trivial visualizations rapidly and to construct libraries of 3D graphics functionality easily. Although our original focus was on parallel program and performance data visualization, Viz applies beyond these areas. We show several examples that highlight Viz functionality and the visualization design process it supports.