Design and Implementation of Web-based Hierarchy Visualization Services

There is a rapidly growing, cross-domain demand for interactive, high-quality visualization techniques as components of web-based applications and systems. In this context, a key question is how visualization services can be designed, implemented, and operated based on Software-as-a-Service as software delivery model. In this paper, we present concepts and design of a SaaS framework and API of visualization techniques for tree-structured data, called HiVISER. Using representational state transfer (REST). the API supports different data formats, data manipulations, visualization techniques, and output formats. In particular, the API defines base resource types for all components required to create an image or a virtual scene of a hierarchy visualization. We provide a treemap visualization service as prototypical implementation for which subtypes of the proposed API resourceshave been created. The approach generally serves as a blue-print for fully web-based, high-end visualization services running on thin clients in a standard browser environment.