Crystal Xcelsius

I got an opportunity to learn about a tool called Xcelsius. It's been a wonderful experience so far. This tool lets you create handy dashboards in less time. The tool is very useful for those who work in Data Ware Housing and would like to create a presentation out of their data. Designing a visualization is very simple and requires no analytical skills. It generates a interactive Flash movie of the presentation which can be easily shared by mail.

Prerequisites for using this tool are,

• Knowledge in spreadsheets and cell formulas.
• XML and Web services (If you want to show dynamic data in your presentation)

Flash knowledge is not required. The tool generates the flash movie and Actionscript based on our design using the underlying data model (spreadsheet). Excel is used only in the design time for defining the data model.

For a demonstration, I've created a visualization which compares popularity of the inputted terms. The logic is implemented in a ASP.Net web service, which makes use of the Google SOAP Search API to find the number of result pages for a search query.

The visualization invokes the web service and gets back the XML data containing number of result pages for each of the inputted terms. The web service is hosted on a free hosting site. So this will be available only for next 30 days (till Sep 8).

Number of result pages is not a perfect measure for popularity. But by phrasing a search query for each of those terms, we can get an approximate picture of their popularity.

Here is the visualization. It can be downloaded here.



Here are some of the sample inputs for this visualization,
1) Sun TV programme
Jaya TV programme
Raj TV programme
Vijay TV programme

2) dinamalar
dinamani
dinakaran

3) sivaji tamil movie
lagaan hindi movie
gilli tamil movie

4) Google search
Yahoo search
MSN search

5) .Net framework
Java Virtual Machine


Technologies behind this visualization,

• Crystal Xcelsius
• Macromedia Flash
  
• ASP.Net web service
  
• Google SOAP Search API
• Microsoft Excel
  
• Free ASP.Net hosting by VWDHosting