Omniscope DataPlayer for Web Publishing

Benefits: cost-effective data publishing for the web

Using Omniscope Professional or the new DataPlayer Edition to add and maintain interactive DataPlayers on web sites has significant benefits both for web designers/developers and their clients:

• better user experience
• less scripting
• easier data maintenance
• automation tools included
• cheaper hosting
• consistent with search engine optimisation

Better user experience

Users interact with complex data sets visually, with real-time performance regardless of server load. Instant feedback enables user preferences to adapt to the trade-offs among their options as they filter. Hours of prospective explanation are encapsulated in the trade-offs depicted in the display. Users rapidly gain confidence and drilling down to detail for only those records most interesting to them. Details view links can connect to hi-res images, detailed specification sheets and other web content accessible at a single click.
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Less scripting

Website navigation menu scripts are very site-specific, and require on-going expertise to write, de-bug and maintain as the data changes. No amount of DHTML scripting can approach the navigational simplicity of DataPlayers. DataPlayers provide a quick and relatively inexpensive alternative to extensive scripting in a single file that can be inserted in any website just like an image.
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Easier data maintenance

Data-intensive websites typically run on a dedicated database in order to react to user input and find the correct data to display. Using a database to hold data navigated by visitors adds to the complexity of building and maintaining websites dramatically. Updating the database requires assistance and sometimes modifications to the navigational and query scripts. Anyone can maintain the data set in Omniscope just like in a spreadsheet, making changes, additions and deletions quickly and easily. Refreshed DataPlayers can be uploaded to the website, overwriting the previous version, just like any other file.
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Automation tools

Omniscope Enterprise installations also include two data refresh automation tools, the Scheduler and the Generator. The Scheduler regularly refreshes the data from source (spreadsheet or database), creates an updated DataPlayer .SWF and sends it to the website via FTP. The Generator listens for personalised data sets delivered in XML. Upon detecting a new file, the Generator creates a customised version of the DataPlayer .SWF and delivers it using the same functions as the Scheduler. (back to top)

Cheaper hosting

Much of the load on a web server is related to front-end navigation, with many irrelevant pages displayed while users look for the specific page(s) of most interest. Flash DataPlayers are processed entirely on the client side machine, eliminating much of this load by substituting the visitors' browser resources, reducing bandwidth requirements, web server load and often eliminating the need for a database with the website.

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Consistent with Search Engine Optimisation

Although data held inside a Flash .SWF file is not currently indexed by search engines, this may change. In the meantime, it is important to realise that humans and search engines navigate sites very differently. Presenting both humans and search engines with the same interface is not the best solution. It is often better to provide humans with one set of visible navigation, such as a data-bearing .SWF DataPlayer, while including all the names/codes/IDs etc. you want search engines to find on detail pages.
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