3D visualization of the geographical & organizational structure of the grid

Enhanced and interactive visualization techniques are the key issues in improving the ability of users to comprehend and work with the large data sets. Various techniques have been used in the past incorporating different media and are applied to a wide range of application domains. In particular, 3D data representation often provides a more enhanced and intuitive user approach than the two dimensional approach. In this paper, we discuss several data visualization techniques with an emphasis on hierarchical data structures. We present a case study involving the implementation of a Web based application enabling the 3D visual access to grid network monitoring data. Geographically distributed computing nodes are arranged into "farms", which further contains a number of the organizationally distributed "clusters". The implemented visualization incorporates a geographical presentation of farms on a 3D model of the Earth and compares two tree-based techniques for the visualization of hierarchically organized clusters and nodes. We discuss the technology used to implement such an application and the achieved user benefits in terms of an enhanced display.