The following application case studies illustrate how information visualization research solves real-world problems.

Software Visualization for Vplus+ (VoIP/CallVantage prototype)

An active research area in telecommunications concerns how to specify and control the addition of new services, such as call waiting or instant messaging, into existing software. The complexity and distributed nature of Voice-over-IP (VOIP) services makes this problem more critical than ever. One approach is to rely on a component-based architecture such as Distributed Feature Composition (DFC), by which a new service can be specified as a composition of primitive features over time. Formally, a communication episode is represented by a dynamic graph of software feature boxes, called a usage. This serves as the fundamental model for how services are invoked and how they interact with other services.

AT&T researchers invented a prototype of the CallVantage VoIP service specified with an implementation DFC called BuildingBox. A principal component of the Building Box system is a user interface for viewing the evolution of a service in the context of network components and other services. Initially, the display aids the user during the process of specifying the service protocols and feature setups, Afterwards, having a visualization of the system assists in validating, and when necessary, debugging the specification. It also provides real-time monitoring of a running system.

The core feature of the interface is a novel display of the dynamic undirected graph representing the physical and logical features of the network. The vertices of the network naturally fall into two classes: external interface nodes and internal feature nodes. This suggests a ``cloud and gateways'' layout, with a boundary of interface nodes surrounding a cloud of feature nodes. A tool providing this visualization was built using components from AT&T Graphviz.

	Whenever I have any questions about what's happening inside our system, I first pull out "the viz." It's absolutely fundamental to development, administration and operation of our system — Tom Smith
	The visualization tool used in our system is invaluable for quickly grasping both the overall status and dynamic behavior of our software. It is always the first tool we reach for when we don't understand what's going on — Hal Purdy
	I find the viz to be very useful when debugging; it gives a conceptually satisfying look at the state of the system and how it's changing during execution — Glenn Hochberg
	Everyone relies on the tool because it is so effective at providing a high-level view of system state as it evolves - the only other view of system state is a log file which is so full of details that it is practically impossible to piece together the system state using it — Greg Bond

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Hosting Element Visualizer (Vizgems)

AT&T's Internet Data Centers are applying the Swift-3D system in a critical application that displays an enterprise customer's end-to-end service in real time. This service is now a standard service offer. Swift's capabilities for data integration in the human interface, network visualization with web clients, and ability to merge realtime data streams with stored data were key factors in choosing it over commercial proprietary software products.

Swift's flexibility made it possible to create the first prototype in just one afternoon.

Swift's scalability makes it possible to stream the data for all customers into the test platform, so that prospective customers can be given an instant demo and initial production service can be turned on immediately.

Yoix in AT&T's Global Fraud Management System

GFMS (the Global Fraud Management System) is AT&T’s primary defense against toll network fraud, including PBX, cellular, card, subscription and other fraud types. GFMS combines the latest fraud detection algorithms with on-line access to extensive call-detail information and a powerful case management system that organizes and records the fraud tracking efforts of over 400 AT&T security associates.

Yoix developed naturally in the course of building GFMS. GFMS required a robust, platform-independent, GUI network client that would be easy to distribute, maintain and update. Yoix technology not only delivered the initial GFMS client, but also provided a growth path that permitted the incorporation of new features including a visual data analysis component and a graph display that can be linked to the data analysis component. Application specific displays are stored on a central server and downloaded as needed to the GUI application running on the client machine, thus making system updates trivial.

The Yoix scripting language is an interpreted C-like language written in standard Java. It provides a high-level way to write applications that use AWT, Swing, Java-2D, sockets, threads or other Java features. Familiar C language elements such as printf, scanf and (safe) pointers make this language easy to learn and use.

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