{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/92826"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/92826","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Effortless data exploration with zenvisage: an expressive and interactive visual analytics system","abstract":"\"Data visualization is by far the most commonly used mechanism to explore data, especially by novice data analysts and data scientists. And yet, current visual analytics tools are rather limited in their ability to guide data scientists to interesting or desired visualizations: the process of visual data exploration remains cumbersome and time-consuming. We propose zenvisage, a platform for effortlessly visualizing interesting patterns, trends, or insights from large datasets. We describe zenvisage's general purpose visual query language, ZQL (\"\"zee-quel\"\") for specifying the desired visual trend, pattern, or insight — ZQL draws from use-cases in a variety of domains, including biology, mechanical engineering, climate science, and commerce. We formalize the expressiveness of ZQL via a visual exploration algebra, and demonstrate that ZQL is at least as expressive as that algebra. While analysts are free to use ZQL directly, we also expose ZQL via a visual specification interface. We then describe our architecture and optimizations, preliminary experiments in supporting and optimizing for ZQL queries in our initial zenvisage prototype, and a user study to evaluate whether data scientists are able to effectively use zenvisage for real applications.\"","abstract_html":"&quot;Data visualization is by far the most commonly used mechanism to explore data, especially by novice data analysts and data scientists. And yet, current visual analytics tools are rather limited in their ability to guide data scientists to interesting or desired visualizations: the process of visual data exploration remains cumbersome and time-consuming. We propose zenvisage, a platform for effortlessly visualizing interesting patterns, trends, or insights from large datasets. We describe zenvisage&#x27;s general purpose visual query language, ZQL (&quot;&quot;zee-quel&quot;&quot;) for specifying the desired visual trend, pattern, or insight — ZQL draws from use-cases in a variety of domains, including biology, mechanical engineering, climate science, and commerce. We formalize the expressiveness of ZQL via a visual exploration algebra, and demonstrate that ZQL is at least as expressive as that algebra. While analysts are free to use ZQL directly, we also expose ZQL via a visual specification interface. We then describe our architecture and optimizations, preliminary experiments in supporting and optimizing for ZQL queries in our initial zenvisage prototype, and a user study to evaluate whether data scientists are able to effectively use zenvisage for real applications.&quot;","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Siddiqui, Tarique Ashraf"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"M.S.","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Computer Science","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Parameswaran, Aditya G.","Han, Jiawei"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2016,"date_issued":"2016-11-10T17:55:03Z","date_published":"2016-11-10T17:55:03Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:35Z","subjects":["Visual analytics","Databases","Query language","Visualization"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright 2016 Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/92826","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Parameswaran, Aditya G.","Han, Jiawei"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Siddiqui, Tarique Ashraf"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2016-11-10T17:55:03Z","2016-07-14","2016-08"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Computer Science"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["M.S."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Visual analytics","Databases","Query language","Visualization"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2016 Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/92826"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["\"Data visualization is by far the most commonly used mechanism to explore data, especially by novice data analysts and data scientists. And yet, current visual analytics tools are rather limited in their ability to guide data scientists to interesting or desired visualizations: the process of visual data exploration remains cumbersome and time-consuming. We propose zenvisage, a platform for effortlessly visualizing interesting patterns, trends, or insights from large datasets. We describe zenvisage's general purpose visual query language, ZQL (\"\"zee-quel\"\") for specifying the desired visual trend, pattern, or insight — ZQL draws from use-cases in a variety of domains, including biology, mechanical engineering, climate science, and commerce. We formalize the expressiveness of ZQL via a visual exploration algebra, and demonstrate that ZQL is at least as expressive as that algebra. While analysts are free to use ZQL directly, we also expose ZQL via a visual specification interface. We then describe our architecture and optimizations, preliminary experiments in supporting and optimizing for ZQL queries in our initial zenvisage prototype, and a user study to evaluate whether data scientists are able to effectively use zenvisage for real applications.\"","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2016-11-09 without embargo terms","The student, Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui, accepted the attached license on 2016-07-12 at 20:43.","The student, Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2016-07-12 at 20:47.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2016-07-14 at 11:49.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #9913 on 2016-11-09 at 10:24:32","Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-10T17:55:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 SIDDIQUI-THESIS-2016.pdf: 1609861 bytes, checksum: 7f7b1e6330cff4f99f1107d1da33adb4 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4220 bytes, checksum: a8d19e8d2f5f1afd983859f36115b7d3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-14"]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Effortless data exploration with zenvisage: an expressive and interactive visual analytics system"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Parameswaran, Aditya G.","Han, Jiawei"],"dc:creator":["Siddiqui, Tarique Ashraf"],"dc:date":["2016-11-10T17:55:03Z","2016-07-14","2016-08"],"dc:description":["\"Data visualization is by far the most commonly used mechanism to explore data, especially by novice data analysts and data scientists. And yet, current visual analytics tools are rather limited in their ability to guide data scientists to interesting or desired visualizations: the process of visual data exploration remains cumbersome and time-consuming. We propose zenvisage, a platform for effortlessly visualizing interesting patterns, trends, or insights from large datasets. We describe zenvisage's general purpose visual query language, ZQL (\"\"zee-quel\"\") for specifying the desired visual trend, pattern, or insight — ZQL draws from use-cases in a variety of domains, including biology, mechanical engineering, climate science, and commerce. We formalize the expressiveness of ZQL via a visual exploration algebra, and demonstrate that ZQL is at least as expressive as that algebra. While analysts are free to use ZQL directly, we also expose ZQL via a visual specification interface. We then describe our architecture and optimizations, preliminary experiments in supporting and optimizing for ZQL queries in our initial zenvisage prototype, and a user study to evaluate whether data scientists are able to effectively use zenvisage for real applications.\"","Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2016-11-09 without embargo terms","The student, Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui, accepted the attached license on 2016-07-12 at 20:43.","The student, Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2016-07-12 at 20:47.","This Thesis was approved for publication on 2016-07-14 at 11:49.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #9913 on 2016-11-09 at 10:24:32","Made available in DSpace on 2016-11-10T17:55:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 SIDDIQUI-THESIS-2016.pdf: 1609861 bytes, checksum: 7f7b1e6330cff4f99f1107d1da33adb4 (MD5) LICENSE.txt: 4220 bytes, checksum: a8d19e8d2f5f1afd983859f36115b7d3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-07-14"],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["http://hdl.handle.net/2142/92826"],"dc:language":["en"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2016 Tarique Ashraf Siddiqui"],"dc:subject":["Visual analytics","Databases","Query language","Visualization"],"dc:title":["Effortless data exploration with zenvisage: an expressive and interactive visual analytics system"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Computer Science"],"thesis:degree_level":["Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["M.S."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:26:35Z"}