Choosing the Best Tool For Data Visualization Storytelling

What do business decision makers look for when choosing the best data visualization storytelling tool for their company?

Factors to consider include the ability to mashup different types of data sources, the ability to import data, integration with data warehousing, options for prototyping new data, accessibility, and user-friendly features that speed up decision making.

InetSoft's StyleBI BI suite ranks a strong first in all these categories.

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Database Connectivity

StyleBI users are empowered by the ability to import data from various databases, including JDBC, XML, Microsoft Excel, and many others. This ability becomes especially useful when tracking trends and patterns that may be overlooked in traditional reporting. The end result – be it data, dashboards, or reports – can then be displayed in a unique manner and shared with other users.

Data Mashup

With data mashup, separate data sources of almost any type can be combined to produce reports and dashboards that tell new stories and create internal information management efficiencies.

InetSoft is a pioneer in data mashup and offers a unique capability of end-user defined data mashup, which means even business users can combine fields from different data sources that were not previously modeled, and import external data sources such as spreadsheets, to create a new dashboard or report to be shared in the BI environment. The end result is maximum self-service.

Ultimate Accessibility

StyleBI is unique in its ability to report across a multitude of data sources whether it is internal, external, or user generated. Users can select from a large variety of possible sources, without necessarily having to be aware of the underlying details.

Additionally, StyleBI is a completely Web-based, zero-client application. Users can connect to their data from any device with a web browser; this includes desktop computers as well as mobile devices such as iPads, mobile phones, Android tablets, etc.

Server administrators can set a large variety of parameters to control exactly what their users can and cannot see. By doing so, the same dashboard can be personalized on a user-by-user basis, displaying only data sources that are deemed appropriate or applicable to the current user.

Dashboard Storytelling with InetSoft

Eliminate desktop-based tools that were made with analysts in mind. StyleBI allows for any user to take advantage of the tool without having a background in advanced configuration or scripting. Once the infrastructure is in place, mash up and dashboard possibilities become endless and are no further than the click of a mouse. It has never been so easy for BI to become accessible to all company members no matter location or skill set.

Read what InetSoft customers and partners have said about their selection of Style Report as their production reporting tool.

Using Data Visualization in Sound and Music Cognition Research

Sound and music cognition research explores how humans perceive, process, and respond to auditory stimuli. As datasets grow in complexity—ranging from neural recordings to emotional response surveys—data visualization becomes essential for uncovering patterns and communicating insights.

Visualizing Auditory Features

Researchers often analyze features such as pitch, timbre, rhythm, and harmonic structure. Spectrograms and waveform plots are foundational tools for visualizing audio signals over time. Chromagrams and tonal centroid plots help map harmonic progressions and key changes, offering insights into musical structure and listener expectations.

Mapping Cognitive and Emotional Responses

To understand how music affects cognition and emotion, researchers use heatmaps, violin plots, and multidimensional scaling to visualize survey data, EEG signals, and physiological metrics. These visuals can reveal how different genres or tempos influence attention, memory, and mood across populations.

Cross-Modal Analysis

Music cognition often intersects with visual, linguistic, and motor domains. Sankey diagrams and network graphs can illustrate connections between auditory stimuli and other sensory modalities. For example, linking rhythmic patterns to motor responses or mapping lyrical content to semantic networks.

Interactive Dashboards for Experimental Design

Interactive dashboards allow researchers to explore participant data in real time, filter by variables such as age or musical training, and adjust experimental parameters dynamically. These tools enhance reproducibility and facilitate hypothesis generation.

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View the gallery of examples of dashboards and visualizations.

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