SmartLink: An Agent for Supporting Dataflow Application Construction

Visual programmable dataflow systems are an effective way to build a large class of visualization applications from existing software modules. However, the appeal of dataflow systems is often decreased as their users have to get familiar with libraries containing hundreds of different modules. Classical documentation systems such as hypertext or example suites are not always effective, as they lack the context of the user's questions and problems. We present a new visual dataflow programming assistant that is simple to use, offers context-sensitive help derived from the user's own behavior, and smoothly integrates in the effective point-and-click visual programming metaphor. We illustrate our approach with real-life usage examples.