Drill Down

BI and GIS

Drill down in used in examining data - by moving from agregated data to more detailed data, often in descrete steps, to the most detailed information.

Key example are drill down in Business Intelligence (BI), and in Geographical Information System (GIS). In both cases, viewers can also move at the same level - pivoting in dimensions for BI, and North/South for GIS.

If GIS (typically interpreted as Geographical Information System) infrastructure is used as Graphical Information System, for diagramtic (symbol based) representation of systems, we can also navigate between different worlds. For example, Graphical representation of an electrical system can link to (and navigate between) the Geographical location of the same equipment. Similarly, a person could be represented in a org chart, in a process, and also have both a "home" and "current" geographical locations.

Non-geographical world are typically flat.

Navigation between Graphical Forms

BI: textual (numbers), Graphical (graphs); GIS: graphical (diagrams) and Geo-graphical (maps) presentation forms. All these forms are potentiall interrelated. For example, a BI dimension could be a location territory (say NSW) or location (e.g. Strathfield), which can be represented on the GIS. Time can be presented in the GIS system by animation. Numerical quantities from the BI can be represented by sizes and colours on the GIS diagrams or maps.

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