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.
One should possess good knowledge on spreadsheets and cell formulae before using this tool. If you want to display dynamic data, there is XML and Web services for you.
Flash knowledge is not required as 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 created a visualization which compares popularity of the two or more 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.
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.
