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

Re:R language

[koutbo6]

I second that. If you are visualizing graphs be sure to get the igraph package which can be used with R, Python, C, or Ruby.
http://cneurocvs.rmki.kfki.hu/igraph/
Processing is another package that is geared towards data visualization which java developers might find easier use
http://www.processing.org/

Try the InfoVis community

[Mithrandir]

The infovis community has been dealing with these subjects for years. There's many different visualisation techniques around. Here's a list of the past conferences and the papers:

http://conferences.computer.org/Infovis/

Plenty of good products out there, but the one that I like most is from Tableau Software (http://www.tableausoftware.com/).

Re:perhaps worth looking at?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that's worth looking at... how about this? http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1121