Visualization of Personalization Information

Abstract: There has been an increasing use of Internet as an information source and also as a new channel for business-to-business and business-to-consumer communication. This has lead to an increasing need for understanding web traffic and especially a growing need for analyzing this traffic, which demands new analysis tools. The objective for this study was to create an application framework for visualizing XML-formatted data representing web traffic reports. Visualization in two dimensions is created by using Batik, a Java ™ toolkit with the purpose of transforming a well formed XML document into a SVG document and then transcode this into an image format supported by today’s web browsers. Visualization in three dimensions is created by using the Java3D API. In order to create an aesthetically well-balanced graph in three dimensions representing a model of the web traffic on a site, the framework uses a layout algorithm called Graphical Embedder (GEM). This is a force-directed algorithm which uses physical analogy to model the graph. GEM emphasises the spring force approach combined with simulated annealing and the detection of oscillations and rotations. The design of the framework is built up using J2EE techniques. At the front-end this application framework uses JSP and Applet showing the graph for a customer using this service. At the back-end the framework uses Servlets combined with a Filter.