VizDSL: Towards a Graphical Visualisation Language for Enterprise Systems Interoperability

In response to the rise of Big Data, modern enterprise architecture has become significantly more complex. Model driven engineering (MDE) has been proposed as a methodology for developing software to deal with complex integration and interoperability. Domain specific languages (DSLs) play a crucial role in MDE and represent languages for a specific purpose that are highly abstract and easy to use. In this paper we propose a new language VizDSL for creating interactive visualisations that facilitate the understanding of complex data and information structures for enterprise systems interoperability. In comparison to existing visualisation languages VizDSL provides the benefits of visualising the semantics of data using a graphical notation. VizDSL is based on the Interaction Flow Modelling Language (IFML) and Agile Visualisation and has been implemented in a prototype. The prototype has been applied on an open data set and results show that interactive visualisation can be implemented quickly using the VizDSL language without writing code which makes it easier to design for non- programmers.