Christian Eberling

WidgetLab: Concept and Prototype of a Generic Data Visualization Service

Today’s world is dominated by the rise of web applications and ubiquitous access to
diverse data sources. Naturally, many developers and stakeholders could benefit if
their applications were able to easily access online data sources and present the most
interesting insights to their users. Even though data sources are often accessible
through well-defined application interfaces, developers still have a lot of work to
do to integrate new data sources into their existing application. Furthermore, the
application will grow more and more complex the more data sources are integrated
without a proper underlying structure. The WidgetLab delivers a concept that can
be used to integrate a data gathering and visualization generating service into an
existing application. While existing solutions often exist as separate applications
which can access and visualize data metrics on their own dashboard system, the
WidgetLab provides a platform upon which developers can design tailor-made information
visualization Widgets that can be viewed and used in integrated applications.
The concept is able to handle multiple diverse data sources and provides visualizations
that preserve access control characteristics defined on the data sources so that
visualizations of sensitive data can only be seen by a permitted audience.