What is Data Mapping?
Data mapping applications visualize and interact
with large numbers of simple items that have many connections between each other.
If the individual items in your data are all very similar and can be understood at a glance,
but the overall shape of your data is hard to grasp - if you sometimes cannot see the forest for the trees -
then you may need a data mapper.
Raven's Point has recently developed four data mappers for clients.
Network Topology
A telecommunication network designer.
A standard multiple document interface windows application designed to set the parameters of the algorithms used
and display the resulting network partitions in different colors. The design priority was to allow the user to visualize the topology of large networks
Three Dimensional Maze
A fantasy world designer.
The left hand pane is a text editor, for entering the description of the world.
The program parses the description and displays the layout of the rooms in the right hand pane,
which can be zoomed and scrolled in three dimensions. Errors, inconsistencies and ommissions in the text are flagged
with an appropriate color.
Requirements Tracer
A requirements tracer. A database of requirememts with hierarchical relationships to each other is displayed
in a zoomable and scrollable window. Click on one of the requirement titles and the complete text pops up.
Computer Aided Plotting
A writer's database.
Manage fragments of text into a coherent work, with descriptions ( meta-text ) of everything.
Display items in chronological or narrative order.
The design priority was to display specific relationships from the heavily interconnected contents of a database.