Visualizing data requires that users know:

1. Leveraging an ESIP Data-Type Ontology to Support Visualization Nicholas Del Rio and Paulo Pinheiro da Silva University of Texas at El Paso Computer Science Department ndel2@miners.utep.edu and paulo@utep.edu ED41C-0660 www.scidesign.org Visualization Questions http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Data_Service_Ontologies • Visualizing data requires that users know: • sequences of tasks that transform their data into desired visualizations • how to implement task sequences using visualization toolkit operators • Can we model relationships between high level tasks and concrete operators supported by visualization toolkits? • Can we leverage existing models defined by scientific communities? 3D Coverage (VTK) Approach • Define a language in the Ontology Web Language (OWL) that describes visualization toolkit functions in terms of: • Views, • Operators, • and Parameters, as shown in Figure 1 • Reuse geometric concepts (e.g., surfaces, contours) defined by an ESIP data-type ontology to represent “views”, as shown in Figure 2 3D Time (VTK) 3D Velocity (VTK) Gravity Data (VTK) Fig. 2. Different Views described by ESIP Data Ontology Preliminary Evaluation • We want to know if our language is capable of describing many visualization processes supported by different toolkits • Currently, we can describe how to generate 2D gravity contour maps and 3D seismic volumes using both Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) and Visualization Toolkit (VTK) • Figure 1 shows how to use our language to describe part of a VTK pipeline that generates iso-surfaces from 3d velocity data Geometry Format/Type Language hasInput/Ouput isA hasParam buildsView View Operator Parameter (buildsViewvtkContourFilter contour) (hasFormatvtkContourFiltervtkInternal) (hasParamvtkContourFilter interval) (hasInputTypevtkContourFilter grid) (hasOutputTypevtkContourFilterpolydata) Statements Conclusions and Future Work • We have designed an OWL based language, using an ESIP data-type ontology, that describes different visualization processes at a computational level • From these descriptions, we can automatically synthesize executable pipelines supported by different visualization toolkits • We are developing a query language based on our language that allows users to declaratively request for visualizations dim, scalar type, byte order interval, color function {color function} {magnification} Application vtk Contour Filter Vtk PolyData Mapper vtkJPEG Writer vtkImage Reader vtkRender Window vtkPolyData vtkGrid This research is supported by the National Science Foundation CREST Grant No. HRD-0734825. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Fig. 1. Describing a VTK operator using our language