Parallel Sets Released! ​

After an initial commitment, an announcement, and a delay, we are proud to announce that the Parallel Sets application has been released! Mac OS X and Windows versions are ready to be downloaded, and the source code is available for your enlightenment and/or entertainment.

This initial release is mostly meant to provide a solid program that works well. It includes a few demo data sets, and it is possible to download additional ones from a repository or import your own. The program needs to pre-process the data and stores it in a local database for flexibility and quick access. While it can import numerical data, it currently only shows categorical data in the visualization.

More features are certainly planned, and you can expect a few major updates over the next few months. We are also looking for feature suggestions (and bug reports) to make the program as useful as possible.

Why Parallel Sets V2.0?, you might ask. The reason is simple: it's the third implementation of the technique, and it's the first one that is made widely available. We did not want to call it 1.0, since it was not the first implementation. The underlying data model is also a step up from the previous two implementations, and we went to great lengths to make the program integrate well in Windows and on the Mac. ParSets 3.0 sounded a bit preposterous, though, and would have raised even more questions (and expectations).

So go ahead and download it, try it out, tell us if it works, and send us your feature requests (and bug reports)!

Posted by Robert Kosara on June 1, 2009.