Visual Information Universe

Abstract

Information visualization provides a new generation of user interface for integrated (extended) enterprises. Its significance has been discussed in chapter 1 and elsewhere. It is also a basis for electronic commerce and other global information enterprises. From a producer’s and customer’s perspective, doing business over the Internet, or in the cyberspace, requires electronic currency, marketing channels, and other electronic counterparts to the traditional market mechanism. However, from an information user’s perspective, once an engagement between the customer and the producer/provider is established in the electronic marketplace, the rest of the activity is but some information jobs between them both of which are indigenous constituencies of the extended enterprise in cyberspace. Thus, information visualization applies to distributed information enterprises such as electronic commerce on the same foundations as it is applied to a traditional enterprise. A new four-dimensional method using ubiquitous enterprise metadata is presented.