Visualizing Complex Data Sets?

markmcb writes "A year ago my company began using SAP as its ERP system, and there is still a great deal of focus on cleaning up the 'master data' that ultimately drives everything the system does. The issue we face is that the master data set is gigantic and not easy to wrap one's mind around. As powerful as SAP is, I find it does little to aid with useful visualization of data. I recently employed a custom solution using Ruby and Graphviz to help build graphs of master data flow from manual extracts, but I'm wondering what other people are doing to get similar results. Have you found good out-of-the-box solutions in things like data warehouses, or is this just one of those situations where customization has to fill a gap?"

Comments

I have a question for you

[zappepcs]

How are you supposed to handle the data if you do not understand it? Sure, there can be too much to see/think about at one time, but if you don't understand it, how can you visualize it usefully?

I am asking because I have a problem: Where I work, I understand the data and I make efforts to visualize it for others. The trouble starts when they don't understand the data and it's sources and limitations, so what they see in my visualization is all they know of it, and they make assumptions about it. I've even had people worry that the network is down because there were holes in the collected data which then showed up in the visualizations.

If anyone has some good URLs for such thinking, I'd be grateful.

I simply do not understand how you can visualize data for people if you yourself do not understand it.