Experiences in Interactive Distributed Visualization

We report on our experiences in distributed interactive data visualizatio n. The experiences are based on previously published work [1, 2, 3]. 1 Distributed Data Management We have designed and developed a distributed blackboard arc hitecture for interactive scientific visualization. The architecture is cente red around a blackboard and satellite processes that produce and consume data. Satellites implem ent the simulation, analysis programs, geometry mapping and rende ing algorithms. The purpose of the blackboard is twofold. First, it acts as a shar ed data space for all satellite processes. Second, it acts as an event notificatio n manager. Satellites can subscribe to events that represent state changes in the blac kboard. Whenever such an event occurs, it will publish the event to all subscribing satellites. The, concepually centralized, blackboard is implemented a s a distributed set of communicating blackboards. Many techniques from distri bu ed computing are used to mantain data consistency, enhance performance, sca lable data sets, etc. The blackboard architecture allowed us to address two impor tant issues concerning interactive visualization environments. First, t igh integration between simulation and visualization. Second, to allow qualitativ e and quantitative data analysis to operate simultanously a shared data space.