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The analytical Process Constructor (AnyProc) is a assistance software for the construction, configuration and re-evaluation of analytical toolchains. These designated toolchains consist of multiple independent software solutions (tools) that are used together in a specific analysis task. AnyProc is therefore intended to provide a customizable interface to structure stand-alone tools in a task-oriented manner and to bridge potential heterogeneities within data exchange or tool execution by empowering the user with the necessary capabilities.
The growing interest in Data Science has led to a multitude of domain-specific visualization tools that are intended to be used for deeper analysis of everyday information. However, in practice, these Visual Analytics (VA) tools are usually either integrated into larger "super applications" or dropped altogether because they are not compatible with other task-related VA tools. While the first case requires technical expertise and thus development time to incorporate novel ideas, the second scenario is way more detrimental for further advancement, as specific visualization methods may not be applied just because the VA tool is not part of an pre-existing library. The goal of AnyProc is therefore to support the combination of existing VA tools and data sources by providing a sustainable approach for the customization of analytical toolchains. Ideally, this can be achieved through an iterative user-oriented prototyping between technical expert (e.g. data scientist) and domain experts (e.g. physician).
AnyProc provides two very distinctive visual interfaces for the editorial creation process and the executable observation process. Namely, the editor module can be used to structure and link various VA tools and data sources in analytical toolchains, while the executor module represents the progression through said toolchains. This way, connections and converters can be added and linked as needed by a technical expert, while the domain expert can traverse through it's desired step-by-step analysis workflow. Thus, goal-oriented or explorative tasks can be modeled and changed on the fly if the situation requires it.
While AnyProc enables the user to build, modify and traverse through analytical toolchains, it is still limited to its imported collection of tools and data sources including those software solutions that bridge the gap between two heterogenous systems. While we are trying to include as many customizable connection options possible, we want to point out that AnyProc is not meant to be a new "super-application" that is capable of solving every data transformation or visual representation issue. These tasks are still bound to the end-user as we assume that they know best which transformations needs to be applied in order to evaluate meaningful findings. Nevertheless, we want to enhanced the possible adaptabtion options for the flexible adjustment of data exchange in the future to provide as much general access to data and function as possible without interfering the individual VA tools’ internal codebase.
The application was created as part of the DFG research project UnIVA to approach the limits of comparability between existing VA tools.