The Tulip 3 Framework: A Scalable Software Library for Information Visualization Applications Based on Relational Data

Tulip is an information visualization framework dedicated to the analysis and visualization of relational data. Based on a decade of research and development of this framework, we present the architecture, consisting of a suite of tools and techniques, that can be used to address a large variety of domain-specific problems. With Tulip, we aim to provide the developer with a complete library, supporting the design of interactive information visualization applications for relational data that can be tailored to the problems he or she is addressing. The current framework enables the development of algorithms, visual encodings, interaction techniques, data models, and domain-specific visualizations. The software model facilitates the reuse of components and allows the developers to focus on programming their application. This development pipeline makes the framework efficient for research prototyping as well as the development of end-user applications.