A Virtual Reality Interface to an Enterprise Metadatabase

Abstract

A variety of semantic data models are inherently three dimensional (3D), yet are popularly presented in 2D diagrammatic outline form. A system called the VIU-2, a second generation prototype of a 3D information visualization system for metadata is presented. Employing a virtual reality (VR) toolkit, VR hardware and a Metadatabase, the system visualizes an enterprise's conceptual model in 3D interactive space. Enterprise users in turn navigate and interact with the model as a means to facilitate information management tasks. Presented are the underlying concepts to this research work and its particular implementation methods.