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U.S. Army - Using netViz to Visualize a Database

The U.S. Army needs to be able to move quickly. In today's high-tech military environment, that also means being able to maintain support lines requiring digital communications across land and sea. To prepare for the times when units are spread across distant parts of the globe, the Army needs to know just how much bandwidth capacity is required at various home bases. But strategic planners need more than just a collection of raw bandwidth data; they also need a way to make the information accessible and meaningful. The answer - netViz.

The Challenge - getting a handle on bandwidth usage

Headquartered at Fort Gordon, Georgia, the U.S. Army Signal Center Directorate of Combat Development is assessing the communications needs of personnel in the field and developing strategies to meet those needs. As the Army begins to embrace high-tech solutions to age-old problems, its bandwidth requirements are quickly increasing. Says Juanita Goad, Project Lead with Janus Research Group, "we've gone way beyond the days when simple voice communications were enough. These days, we need the ability to do things like conduct video teleconferences, do database entry and run a full range of multi-media applications from the field. For example, we're looking at medical-imaging technology that allows personnel across the globe to send x-rays, lab data, or video procedures to medical surgeons and specialists at a unit's home base or elsewhere."

"But before we can start installing cables at our facilities, we need to get a handle on our bandwidth requirements. We are developing an Access database that we're using to collect and maintain data representing traffic between deployed field personnel and buildings at various installations. We're gradually populating the database by monitoring actual field use. For example, when we collect communications requirements for disaster relief in Honduras, we gather information about every actual communication transmission - the identities of the originator and the recipient, the size and frequency of the transmission, and so on, and enter it into our tables. But once the database is fully populated, we still need a way to easily make sense of the data. That's where netViz comes in. NetViz was already being used to model other procedures, such as systems architecture, tactics and techniques, so we adapted it to fit our needs. It gives us a great way to present the data that we've entered into the Access databases."

Using netViz to visualize an Access database

Goad's team is using netViz's database-linking feature and hierarchical drill-downs to visualize the bandwidth-requirements. "The top level of our project is a regional map," says Goad. "A double click on the United States opens a U.S. map with each facility shown. By continuing to double click various objects, and drill down, a user can visualize an installation, its resident major commands and their units, command functions, subordinate commands and even individual buildings. We'll use netViz to connect each of those graphical images with data fields in our Access database that show bandwidth usage. The result is that within seconds we can graphically see how much bandwidth is needed by an entire installation or by a single building. It becomes a simple matter of structuring our queries and then visualizing the results in netViz."

"And we've discovered added benefits that fall out naturally from our use of netViz. For example, if we decide to move a unit from one building to another, we can look at our netViz diagrams to see if the new building has enough bandwidth capacity in light of that unit's predicted needs. If it doesn't, we know that we'll need to add items to our budget for additional cabling at the new building."

The bottom line - increased productivity

"We have lots of information," says Goad, "But without netViz it would just be rows and columns of numbers and unintelligible data. By linking the data to netViz graphics, we've made it intelligible and easily accessible to everyone who needs to see it, and that allows us to do our job better."