SoTableStub: un tool general purpose per la visualizzazione di scenari di dati tabellari

Abstract

In the routine activities of research and monitoring within the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV-OE) different actors manifest, over time and for several purposes, the need to analyse particular subsets of data contained in various databases. Often, in fact, before using sophisticated analysis tools, a mere cross-visualization of the data offers a first and concrete help in the analysis of the same. For example, new queries are constantly being designed to aggregate and provide informations relating to groups of instruments of the monitoring networks or relating to particular time series of interest or even to list services belonging to control room systems. Once created, the aggregation queries are then integrated into existing tools (web pages, client/server applications), or sometimes new tools are designed and implemented from scratch to explore the requested data (which may vary over time). These activities, which are certainly difficult (or even prohibitive) to carry out for a “layman”, impact the normal activity of the IT staff who is called to design queries and create new data visualization tools or continuously integrate the existing ones.
The SoTableStub application was created to meet this need, allowing even less experienced users to independently create display panels (called “scenarios”) that can be customized both in terms of content and style, in order to show data coming from different sources and available in tabular format. One of its strengths is that it was designed for the web and then users need only a web browser to run the application and visualize data.