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HowTo
The following sections briefly sketches how to use CubeViz:
- Selection of structural elements
- Selection of charts
- Selection of chart options
As a starting point in order to browse statistical data using CubeViz, users should focus on the Data Selection Box located on the upper left part of the window. Following the structure given by the DataCube vocabulary, users are able to select specific structural elements of the DataCube.
After selection of the desired Data Structure and Data Set, CubeViz is requesting the set of dimensions with respect to the selection. Behind the dimension labels the count of selected dimension elements is listed (first number) together with amount of all available dimension elements. An option button located on the right hand of each listed dimension opens a dialogue when clicking.
This dialogue offers possibilites to manually select dimension elements that are interested by users. After selecting the desired dimension elements, users should click the Update and Close button on the upper right corner of the dialogue. Behind the dimension labels the count of selected dimension elements should be updated.
As a result of clicking on the button Show/Update visualization the content area of the screen should being updated according to user's selection. The fact which specific chart(s) one receives depends on user's selection and is described in the next section.
In order to decrease the amount of server requests CubeViz processes the output mostly on the client side (in the browser) and often re-uses already received data parts. As a result of this behavior, the address bar of the browser is not being updated if users make selections. However, users are provided with a link of their selection, if they click the Permalink button (bottom left corner of the Data Selection Box. Subsequently they can either directly use the generated link or copy it to the clipboard using the context menue of the browser.
According to the user selection of structural elements (see section above) and the resulting set of observations, CubeViz is offering suitable chart types. The first suitable chart is selected automatically and is displayed directly after clicking the button Show/Update Visualization. Further suitable charts can be selected on the top right corner of the application.
Not all chart types are suitable for all individual user selections. A pie chart,for instance, can be used to compare different observation on the basis of elements of one dimension. Furthermore spline, column and a bar chart are used to compare observations on the basis of elements of more than one dimension. On the page of examples, a set of samples is listed, explaining the successive processes CubeViz executes for the respective selection. The last option in the chart switcher is a table, which is listing all resources, that are on the one hand selected by users (DataStructures, Datasets, Dimensions and Dimension elements) and on the other hand the observations which are linked to them. All of these resources are linked to their source location which are usually outgoing links.
Most of the charts offer options, that help users to optimize the output according their needs. These options can be set up in the Chart Options Box as illustrated in the depictions below. To open the chart option box, users only have to click on the chart icon again. After opening this box, users can select exactly one element per identifier and proceed with the selections while clicking on the button Update chart. To close this box without accepting changes, the specific button on the top-right corner of the box can be clicked.
In the following we sketch available options:
- Type: Some of the charts offer the selection of a respective subtype. The line chart output, for instance, can be refined by setting up the subtype spline or scatter-plot. The polar chart output is created with the default subtype column and can be refined with the options column, spline, line, area, areaspline and scatter.
- Switching axes: If users create a selection of dimension elements along two dimensions it is sometimes necessary to switch the relation between dimensions and its regarding axis.
- Data Labels: This option can be set up if the user want to see the underlying measurement values as part of the chart output. The measurements are shown by default as part of the tooltip, which is opening while hovering over observations.
- Stacking: If users select much dimension elements, the lucidity can be lost. This option can help to get the lucidity back.
- Scale: The scale of a chart is set up as linear by default. If to be compared dimension elements (or its regarding observations) have a hugh divergence of its measurements, it is possible that small values can not be displayed. To get them displayed the scale can be set up to logarithm.
- Inverted: This option is different to the option Switching Axes. While setting up the option inverted the dimensions elements on the X-Axis are switched with them from the value axis.