VisualTPL: A visual dataflow language for report data transformation |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway;2. Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway;3. Faculty of Computer Science and Media Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway;1. Sapienza Università di Roma, Facoltà di Ingegneria dell׳Informazione, Informatica e Statistica, Italy;2. Sapienza, Universitá di Roma, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica Automatica e Gestionale, Italy;3. Jomo Kenyatta University (JKUAT), Institute of Computer Science, Kenya |
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Abstract: | Data transformation, an important part of report generation, converts the layout of source data into a new layout suitable for presentation. Many report tools have been developed for end-users to specify data transformation. However, current report tools only support a limited set of report layouts. This paper proposes a visual dataflow programming language, called VisualTPL, to resolve this problem. Data transformation is accomplished by writing graphical dataflow programs, which manipulate tables as first-class objects with a set of extendable table operations. A report tool, called VisualTPS, has been developed to offer an easy and intuitive end-user programming environment. Reports with sophisticated layouts can be created through top-down decomposition and incremental development. An evaluation has been conducted to assess end-users' performance with VisualTPL. The results indicated that end-users could learn VisualTPL in a short time and create complicated report layouts all by themselves. And, in comparison with a commercial report tool, VisualTPL offered end-users similar performances and was preferred over the commercial tool. |
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Keywords: | Report generation Dataflow Visual language Data transformation Table operation |
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