1. Alices Adventures in Reporting Services Presenter: Jen Stirrup, Contact: jenstirrup@jenstirrup.com SQLBits VII Saturday 2 nd October, 2010

2. Agenda Business Intelligence and the Red Queens Race you want to get somewhere… you must run at least twice as fast as that!

3. Agenda Business Intelligence and the Red Queens Race you want to get somewhere… you must run at least twice as fast as that! Business Intelligence and Alices Question What is the use of a book, without pictures?

4. Agenda Business Intelligence and the Red Queens Race you want to get somewhere… you must run at least twice as fast as that! Business Intelligence and Alices Question What is the use of a book, without pictures? Practical Applications – the Doorknob Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction. Over to you!

5. Reporting and the Red Queen

7. Why not just tables? Zimbabwean inflation rates (official) since independence DateRateDateRateDateRateDateRateDateRateDateRate 19807%198114%198215%198319%198410%198510% 198615%198710%19888%198914%199017%199148% 199240%199320%199425%199528%199616%199720% 199848%199956.9%200055.22%2001112.1%2002 198.93 % 2003 598.75 % 2004 132.75 % 2005 585.84 % 2006 1,281.1 1% 2007 66,212. 3% 2008 231,150,888.87 % (July)

8. Thinking with your Eyes

9. Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

10. Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

11. Pre-attentive Attributes AttributeExampleAssumption Spatial Position 2D Grouping 2D Position Sloping to the right = Greater FormLength Width Orientation Size Longer = Greater Higher = Greater ColourHue Intensity Brighter = Greater Darker = Greater

12. Pre-attentive Attributes AttributeExampleGraph Type Spatial Position 2D Grouping 2D Position Line Graph FormLength Width Orientation Size Bar Chart ColourHue Intensity Scatter Chart

16. Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

17. Visual Integration Chartjunk Data/Ink Ratio

18. Mobilising Visual Integration Affordance Highlighting – bright colours Increasing Intensity = Increasing Values Eye Tracking Studies Eye Path going from cluster to legend, and back again (Ratwani, 2008)

19. Mobilising Visual Integration Sequential Palettes Diverging Palettes Qualitative Palettes

20. Visual Integration

21. Stages of Processing Preattentive Processing Visual Integration Cognitive Integration

22. Building an understanding of the graph Eye Tracking Studies Eye Path going from cluster to cluster, rather than cluster to legend (Ratwani, 2008)

23. Cognitive Integration Summary first Zoom and filter Then details on-demand (Schneiderman, 1999)

24. Cognitive Integration Comparison Sorting Bookmarks – analytical view of browsing

25. Mobilising Cognitive Integration Humans are not good at judging: 2D Area Angles

26. Mobilising Cognitive Integration Humans are not good at judging: 2D Area Angles Pie Charts and Gauges rely on these characteristics…

27. Lost Finale: Mins Breakdown

28. Bullet Chart Text LabelBar to display Performance measure Marker to display Comparative measure

29. Bar Chart Example - Original

30. Dot Plot Example

31. Bullet Graph Example

32. Summary Reporting and the Red Queens Race Three Stages of Processing Some Practical Suggestions! Over to you!

33. Contact Details jenstirrup@jenstirrup.com Twitter.com/jenstirrup

34. Coming up… P/X001 Understanding and Preventing SQL Injection Attacks Kevin Kline P/L001 SSIS Fieldnotes Darren Green P/L002 The (Geospatial) Shapes of Things to Come Simon Munro P/L005 End to End Master Data Management with SQL Server Master Data Services Jeremy Kashel P/T007 Understanding Microsoft Certification in SQL Server Chris Testa-O'Neill # SQLBITS

35. References Information Visualisation, Perception For Design, Second Edition, Colin Ware, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco CA. Cleveland, W.S. The elements of graphing data. Wadsworth Advanced Books and Software, Monterey, Canada, 1985 Treisman, A. Features and Objects in visual processing. Scientific American, 255(2): 114 - 125, 1986 Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers, MacGuire et al 1999 Chartjunk image used 80 4-point "ley lines" pass through 137 random points. Original raster image by The Anome, vectors by Mysid. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ley_lines.svg for details. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.ley lines http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ley_lines.svg

36. References Raj M. Ratwani, J. Gregory Trafton, Deborah A. Boehm-Davis (2008). Thinking graphically: Connecting vision and cognition during graph comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14 (1), 36-49 DOI: Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman, Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, Academic Press, San Diego, California, 1999, quoting a research paper by Kumar, Plaisant, and Shneiderman.) Visual Explanations, Edward Tufte (1997)