Automatic abstraction management in information visualization systems

The construction of information visualization systems is a difficult task. However, there is little research into the provision of software architectures for visualization systems to reduce this difficulty. Particularly, systems that provide a reusable support for the automatic management of the different levels of abstraction in which complex data can be observed cannot be found in current visualization systems. Telescope, an object-oriented architecture for visualization systems is presented. Its main goal is to provide a customizable infrastructure to develop visualization systems allowing the automatic management of the different levels of abstraction in which the visualized information can be observed. Telescope is based on the concept of abstractor objects which provides the generic behavior to support visualizations with semantic zoom capabilities controlled externally through abstraction scales. CityVis, a visualization system for city data, developed using the Telescope architecture, is also described.