Visual Analysis for Everyone - Understanding Data Exploration and Visualization

Although visual interfaces and databases are two of the success stories of the computer revolution, their synergy to date has been modest, probably because visual interfaces have focused on human capabilities while databases have focused on efficient query processing. Unlocking this synergy will shift us from data workers to data thinkers, people who can use data at the speed-of-thought.

Three problems must be addressed:

1. ineffective information presentations,
2. poor exploratory capabilities, and
3. difficult user interfaces.

This whitepaper describes how Tableau Software solves these problems with a declarative visual query language (VizQL) that simultaneously describes how to query data and how to present it visually. The result is a fundamentally new way of interacting with databases and spreadsheets. Software products based on VizQL can be used for tasks that range from everyday question answering that require small data collections and simple visual analysis to mission-critical tasks that require very large data collections and deep multidimensional visual analysis.