Spatial visualization tools in business information systems

The paper presents a prototype application – Spatial Visualization Tool (SVT), that can be used to visualize data from different kinds of Business Information Systems and external sources such as the Internet and document bases in the form of an interactive map. The concept of the paper is based on the assumption that all business data can be visualized in a way analogous to geographic maps. The manner of such a visualization can be very legible and facilitate business decision-making when it comes to analyzing large amounts of data. The first part of the paper introduces the reader toselected aspects of Geographic Information Systems methodology and briefly presents the algorithm of SVT. The second part explains the theoretical algorithm of acquiring data and performing a spatial visualization. The last section of the paper covers the practical example of SVT application to select candidates for a job. The prototype tool was constructed using Microsoft Excel with Visual Basic for Applications. We also present the idea to extend the functionality of SVT using semantic Web technologies for recognizing data sources and types to facilitate the automation of data visualization.