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The computational notebook serves as a versatile tool for data analysis. However, its conventional user interface falls short of keeping pace with the ever-growing data-related tasks, signaling the need for novel approaches. With the rapid development of interaction techniques and computing environments, there is a growing interest in integrating emerging technologies in data-driven workflows. Virtual reality, in particular, has demonstrated its potential in interactive data visualizations. In this work, we aimed to experiment with adapting computational notebooks into VR and verify the potential benefits VR can bring. We focus on the navigation and comparison aspects as they are primitive components in analysts' workflow. To further improve comparison, we have designed and implemented a Branching&Merging functionality. We tested computational notebooks on the desktop and in VR, both with and without the added Branching&Merging capability. We found VR significantly facilitated navigation compared to desktop, and the ability to create branches enhanced comparison.
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A Case for Integrating Experimental Containers with Notebooks
Computational notebooks have gained much pop- ularity as a way of documenting research processes; they allow users to express research narrative by integrating ideas expressed as text, process expressed as code, and results in one executable document. However, the environments in which the code can run are currently limited, often containing only a fraction of the resources of one node, posing a barrier to many computations. In this paper, we make the case that integrating complex experimental environments, such as virtual clusters or complex networking environments that can be provisioned via infrastructure clouds, into computational notebooks will significantly broaden their reach and at the same time help realize the potential of clouds as a platform for repeatable research. To support our argument, we describe the integration of Jupyter notebooks into the Chameleon cloud testbed, which allows the user to define complex experimental environments and then assign processes to elements of this environment similarly to the way a laptop user may switch between different desktops. We evaluate our approach on an actual experiment from both the development and replication perspective.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1743358
- PAR ID:
- 10195660
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom 2019)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/CloudCom.2019.00032
