Visualization of large data sets with the Active Data Repository

We implement ray-casting-based volume rendering and isosurface rendering methods using the Active Data Repository (ADR) for visualizing out-of-core data sets. We have developed the ADR object-oriented framework to provide support for applications that employ range queries with user-defined mapping and aggregation operations on large-scale multidimensional data. ADR targets distributed-memory parallel machines with one or more disks attached to each node. It is designed as a set of modular services implemented in C++, which can be customized for application-specific processing. The ADR runtime system supports common operations such as memory management, data retrieval, and scheduling of processing across a parallel machine.