International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),

Vol. 14, No. 9, September 2016

Data Visualization tools – A case study

B.Hariharan R.Krithivasan Dr V.S Felix Enigo
B.E Computer Science and B.E Computer Science and B.E (CSE), M.E (CSE), Ph.D
Engineering. Engineering. SSN College of Engineering
SSN College of Engineering SSN College of Engineering Kalavakkam, Chennai, Tamil
Kalavakkam, Chennai, Tamil Kalavakkam, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
Nadu, India. Nadu, India.

ABSTRACT - Sudden explosion in the amounts of data being generated everyday has created a need to leverage unprecedented
volumes of available information. Data has become an untapped valuable asset. The true potential of data can only be
discovered when it is extracted, analysed and put to use in the decision making processes. This is where data visualization tools
lend a helping hand. Such tools provide a more intuitive insight into the complex details, patterns and trends that lie dormant
inside the data. By placing these trends and patterns in a visual context we can reap more benefits from it.
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Importance of Data Visualization
Data visualisation is the presentation of data in a pictorial format using tables, graphs, maps, charts, etc. It empowers the decision
makers with the ability to see analytics presented visually, so that they can grasp the difficult concepts and trends. Interactive
visualisation takes us a step closer to efficient exploitation of data by performing operations such as drilling, slicing on the charts and
graphs. These tools help the people understand complex patterns, trends and correlations that might otherwise go unnoticed.

B. Data Visualization process

The data visualisation is done through a series of steps which have to be executes extremely cautious to get accurate results. The first
step is to capture or import the data from various sources and store it in a convenient format. Next, the data is preprocessed by
performing operations such as cleaning and removing noise. Now the data is given as input to a data visualisation tool. These tools
then depending upon the user’s choice of visualisation serve the data in an aesthetically appealing and in an easy to understand format.

Input Output
Data Preproce Data Visualization
sources ssing visualization (Charts, graphs)
tool

Customization

Fig 1. Steps in Data visualization

II. Data Visualization tools an overview

There are a huge number of data visualisation tools available, which are enriched with a wide variety of functionalities and provide a
lot of customization to the users. The data visualisation tools are subdivided into various categories based on the data source they use
and the intended client of the tool.

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 International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 14, No. 9, September 2016

Data Visualization tools

Static data source Streaming data

Open source Proprietary

Fig 2: Classification of Data visualization tools

A. Static Data source

This type of data source data is available in one of the standard formats such as csv, excel, etc. The entire data to be visualised is
readily stored before feeding it into the visualisation tools. The tools under this category are further subdivided into two categories
namely open source and proprietary.

1.Open source
Source code of these tools are available to public which can be accessed and modified as and when required and they are available at
free of cost.

a.FusionCharts
Fusion charts is an extremely exhaustive and feature rich tool. It provides the user with more than 90 charts and 965 maps to choose
from. It supports both old and modern web browsers. It supports two major data formats (JSON and XML).The charts can be exported
to PNG, JPEG, SVG or PDF formats. The charts and maps are platform and device independent and are extremely interactive. It
accepts parameters as inputs and returns the whole chart as the output. It is an open source tool. Two major disadvantages of this tool
are that it is extremely expensive and provides limited customization.

b.RAW
RAW is one of the tools that provide highly creative and appealing visualizations. It comes with around 15 predefined charts while
also allowing the users to add one themselves. It has a simple interface and requires the user to drag and drop attributes in order to
create visualization. RAW has a wide range of customizations available and support custom layouts. The visualizations provides by

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 International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 14, No. 9, September 2016

this toll are highly interactive and feels lively. It is an open source tool and user need not register to use the tool. A major advantage of
this tool is that it allows us to export the visualizations easily and they are free of watermarks. It also has the option of allowing user to
embed the visualizations directly in any webpage. The data is also very secure when using this tool as all the processing is handled by
the browser.

c.HighCharts
HighCharts is a big player in the charting space. It plays an exceptionally important role in charting of stocks. One of the striking
feature of HighCharts is that it offers a separate charting solution for stocks known as “HighStocks”. It allows exporting to various
formats like SVG (Scalar Vector Graphics), PNG. It is very suitable for individual users as it is free for non-commercial applications.
The input data format can be only JSON. It is an open source tool. Personalised tech support and community forum options are
available. Both 2D and 3D maps spanning all countries, states and cities are available. Certain limitations are charts scrolling
capabilities are not available, no node diagrams for network simulations.

d.GoogleCharts
It provides cross browser compatibility and high degree of portability. GoogleCharts supports VML 2D graphics and XML based files
for older browsers (IE versions before IE10).It provides 30 chart types in 2D maps and it is open source. The JS files are directly
loaded from Google servers so it is mandatory to stay online to view the charts. Certain additional chart types supported by
GoogleCharts are treemap, stepped area, Table and Grid charts. Some of the shortcomings of this tool are that its functionalities are
limited. It does not support features like Zooming, Scrolling/Panning, X-Axis label management. One of the major disadvantage is it
cannot be exported to JPEG, PNG or PDF.

e.Leaflet
Leaflet is an open source JavaScript library for mobile friendly, interactive maps. It was developed by a team of dedicated contributors
led by Vladimir. It works efficiently across all major mobile and desktop platforms. Primarily it takes advantage of HTML5 and CSS3
on the modern browsers and it is also backward compatible. It provides an extensive suite of plugins. The tool is presented as an easy
to use and well documented API. It’s simple and readable source code makes it easy for the developer to contribute to. One of the
major attractions of this tool is that it is very light (approximately 33kb).

2.Proprietary
The source code of these tools are not available for general public. Most of the tools charge a lump sum for utilizing the tool.

a.Tableau
Tableau is probably the most popular visualization tool that provides highly interactive and appealing visualizations. It allows the user
to add features in a drag and drop manner and they are highly customizable. It is feature rich. Tableau online provides one of the
easiest and fastest way to share analytics in the cloud. The recent version of tableau “Tableau 9” has shown certain remarkable
improvements. It does simple and rapid data preparation. Some of the remarkable features are mobile-ready dashboards, Tableau
Public for data sharing, Tableau reader for data viewing etc. However it has certain limitations like it does not support connectivity to a
database, it is inflexible ,security threats in row level security and the features of the free version of Tableau is extremely restricted.

b.D3.js (Data Driven Documents)

D3 is another most sought after data visualization tool. The best part about it is it works on the web. It is highly flexible, works well
with the existing technology and it exploits the built-in capabilities of the browser making the developers’ job easy.D3 does not have
any pre built charts that limit the creativity. It is an amalgam of a graphics and data processing library.D3 helps you to bring data to
life by using HTML, SVG and CSS. It is most suitable when your webpage is interacting with data.

c.Datawrapper
Datawrapper is an easy to work online tool. It consists of various visualizations. It provides us interactive visualizations on providing
the data as input. For each chart we have a wide range of different customizations that helps the user tailor the visualization to his/her
needs. Datawrapper provides a plethora of layouts to choose from. It has the feature of social sharing that allows the user to directly
embed the charts in any webpage. Some notable features are its adaptability and its fast creation. Maps are not really the stronghold of
the suit. They are still in the beta testing stages. So at the moment it can only geocode countries or states and not the cities and another
important limitation is that there is no option to customize the information window.

d.Domo
Domo is an upcoming data visualization tool that is very similar to Tableau. It’s prime focus is getting analyst and businesses out of
excel and democratizing data information. It is enriched with beautiful visualizations and provides an extensive suite of chart features.
It fosters collaboration on data views. However it has certain limitations. There is no or very little customization available. There is no
change in the data setup and requirement processing to enable easy visualization. Above all it is pretty expensive.

e.Infogram
Infogram has many different charts/infographics and provides upto 35 different charts and 200 different maps. It also provides the
feature of private sharing. There are over 20 ready-made designs available in this tool. Infogram allows us to perform lot of

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 International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 14, No. 9, September 2016

customizations on the visualization. The visualizations generated by this tool are highly interactive. Major advantage of this tool is the
range of available input options for the data. It supports xls, xlsx, csv, Dropbox, Onedrive, JSON feed, Google analytics and allows for
data search in global sources. However the main disadvantage is that all these features are available only in paid version. The free
version is very basic and does not provide a lot of features. Moreover the free version also incorporates it’s huge logo in the
visualization generated.

Table 1. Comparison of the data visualization tools

Image export
Name of the tool Open source Customization Javascript support Input formats
facility Domain Specific
level supported

Tableau No High Inbuilt No Yes Spreadsheets,Cl

oud
databases,cubes,
relational
databases

D3 No High Manual No Yes JSON,CSV,geoJ

SON

Datawrapper No High Inbuilt No Yes CSV,Excel

sheet

FusionCharts Yes Limited Inbuilt No Yes JSON,XML

Domo No Limited Inbuilt No Yes Databases,sprea

dsheet,social
media platform

RAW Yes High Inbuilt No Yes Input data

HighCharts Yes Good Inbuilt Yes Yes JSON

GoogleCharts Yes Limited No No Yes Input data

Infogram No High Inbuilt No Yes xls,xlsx,csv,Dro

pbox,Onedrive,J
SON
feed,Google
analytics,Data
search in global
sources

Leaflet Yes Good Inbuilt No Yes csv,kml,GeoJS

ON,GPX,WMX

B. Streaming Data
This type of data source is more authentic than static data. The time elapsed between the occurrence of an event and the response to it
varies in milliseconds. Analytics on real time data is highly necessary for proactive decision making.

Inspite of the short duration of the interval there are three major steps in visualising of real time data.

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 International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security (IJCSIS),
Vol. 14, No. 9, September 2016

Streaming Visualization Reporting

data component interface
No SQL
Database

Fig 3:Steps in streaming data visualisation

A. Steps involved
1) The live or streaming data is captured. This is facilitated by the help of listeners, scrapers, collectors, etc.
2) The stream of data collected is processed in a variety of ways like merging, calculations, splitting etc. to make the ready for
visualisation.
3) The data after processing is stored in a format like JSON. The data is fed into the visualisation component. The frequency at which
data is passed from the database is known as UPDATE INTERVAL
4) The visualisation component reads the data and draws charts or graphs accordingly in the reporting interface.

III. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The data visualisation tools discussed above no doubt help the users to extract meaningful and useful information from the myriad
amount of data that is being generated everyday. However, with the inclusion of certain additional features the efficiency of these tools
can be augmented to unprecedented heights. After a detailed study of the existing data visualisation tools we have come up with the
following suggestions. They are, the functionalities of the data visualisation tools must be extended to handle real time data more
professionally. Studies have shown that organisations using real time data analysis have outpaced all other organisations in a variety of
key metrics. Introduction of this feature empowers the decision makers to instantly identify and support new opportunities in their
developing stages. Next, the visualisations offered by the various tools should be extended to handle data in a domain specific manner.
Only a few tools have this facility currently like the “HighStocks” of “HighCharts”. As each domain is entirely unique in its
characteristics using the same set of charts for all types of data will render the entire visualisation process meaningless. Incorporations
of these features in to the existing data visualisations will make them extremely powerful as never before.

IV. REFERENCES
[1] http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/04/21/the-14-best-data-visualization-tools/#gref.
[2] https://www.necam.com/docs/?id=0cfb4a3b-0a01-4f0c-a5c3-a576f3307626.
[3] http://www.datawatch.com/analysis-of-real-time-streams/
[4] http://www.hotscripts.com/listings/editor_review/fusioncharts-open-source-flash-charts-for-dynamic-php-apps/
[5] http://www.sas.com/en_sg/insights/big-data/data-visualization.html
[6] http://www.shawn-mcgahee.com/blog/2015/5/17/data-visualization

[7] ISBN: 978-3-540-68686-6 Information Flocking: Data Visualisation in Virtual Worlds Using Emergent Behaviours
Publisher:Springer Berlin Heidelberg
[8] Data visualisation tools—a perspective from the pharmaceutical industry Jeanette Eldridge,elesvier Volume (Year): 28 (2006)
Issue (Month): 1 (March) Pages: 43-49
[9] http://mashable.com/2014/01/08/data-visualizations-real-time/#kWGO8yyL3kq5
[10] http://www.zoomdata.com/product/real-time-streaming-analytics/
[11] https://spark-summit.org/east-2016/events/interactive-visualization-of-streaming-data-powered-by-spark/
[12] http://www.conductor.com/nightlight/build-real-time-data-stream-miley-cyrus/

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