Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Opening up Visualization

Yesterday we released a complete data source implementation for the Google Visualization API open wire protocol in an open source Java library. This enables users of the Visualization API, including enterprises, SMBs and other web application providers, to easily customize their data sources and make them compatible with the Visualization API Open Wire protocol. For some data sources, integrating this library could be an order of magnitude faster and require less resources than having to do a full implementation out of the protocol specification.

As business data continues to grow, so, it seems, does the challenge of understanding it. Visualization, or the presentation of data in charts, graphs, tables, and other visual representations, is often the missing piece that people need to make sense of this information.

To address these growing needs, last year we introduced the
Google Visualization API, a powerful API that enables anyone to build apps and display data from Google spreadsheets, as well as enabling visualization in the cloud from any data source connected to the web.

Companies can create and use reporting applications from the Google Visualization Gallery that can be integrated anywhere on the web. The gallery offers dozens of visualizations, from pivot tables and heat graphs to the celebrated motion charts and timelines.

We have also opened up the gallery so that any developer can include their new innovative visualizations and make them available to others. To facilitate multiple data sources, we have published an Open Wire protocol that specifies how to make any data source ready for use by the Visualization API. And we recently announced the Google Secure Data Connector (SDC), which enables to keep the data sources behind a company firewall, while serving visualizations and other apps in the cloud.

All of these abilities bring
us closer towards Open Visualization in the cloud, and today we take one more big step in this direction. We believe that these enhancements will facilitate innovative and more accessible visualizations of business information, helping enterprises communicate with information in ever-better ways.

Posted by Nir Bar-Lev, Head of Analytics, EMEA, and Yossi Matias, Head of Israel Engineering Center




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