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09.03.28


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That's brilliant, to make a relation a dimension!
             --Heinz von Foerster, pioneering 1940s cybernetician

Hey, this is profound!
               -- Larry Tesler, distinguished PARC and Apple veteran
This might really surprise you, but your basic motivation for ZigZag, took me until now to meaningfully grasp. It truly is a process of UNLEARNING! The funny thing is that you have done anything and everything possible to plainly state it, your examples are good, your explanations clear, yet even someone with a fairly open mind, such as me, takes half a year or more to finally appreciate it.
-- Harry Mendell, inventor of music sampling and brain-wave interfaces

 


The ZIGZAG® DATABASE
and
VISUALIZATION SYSTEM



ZigZag holds a new, liberated form of data and shows it in wild new ways.

Conventional data structures-- especially tables and arrays-- are confined structures created from a rigid top-down specification.

ZigZag structures are created from individual relations, bottom-up, and can be irregular and unlimited.

Its uses range from database and spreadsheet to unifying the internals of large-scale software.

Almost no one understands the ZigZag concept without trying it hands-on, so we urge you to do so (with the Starter Kit).

TRY IT HANDS-ON

Adam Moore has kindly set up a demo showing the royal families of Europe in hyperthongonal structure (zzstructure).  Walk through it on your Mac or PC.

Download our ZigZag-gzz Starter Kit.  Inside the zipfile you will find a folder, "ZigZag-gzz".  Put it in Windows C: or on Mac Desktop. 

(Requires Java.)

Inside you will find
 - Mac fireup directions
 - PC fireup directions
 - walkthrough instructions
 - power-user instructions, in case you really love it.

ENJOY!

 SEE THE MOVIE
(9 minutes).

Adam Moore, raconteur and biochemist, takes us on a tour de force of bioinformatics-- with explorable animations based on hyperthogonal data (zzstructure).

YOU DON'T HAVE TO KNOW CHEMISTRY TO APPRECIATE WHAT'S HAPPENING ON THE SCREEN.

Watch it directly hence., or download all 40 meg (right-click and "save link as").

Be sure to watch all nine minutes-- the animation of the Krebs cycle at the end is not to be believed.

HERE'S THE DATA if you want to follow it hands-on.  (Best to learn the interface first through the Starter Kit.)
 

 READ ALL ABOUT IT

We have a peer-reviewed article on the structure and its implications.  Once you get past the title the rest is easy.

(The title is "A Cosmology for a Different Computer Universe: Data Model, Mechanisms, Virtual Machine and Visualization Infrastructure".  The article is in the British Computer Society's on-line Journal of Digital Information.) 
 

 ZIGZAG VERSIONS

We are working on an industrial version of ZigZag (Rzz); meanwhile we are giving away Gzz, the beautiful Finnish prototype  by Tuomas J. Lukka (elegant graphics and interaction, but unstable).  It's in the Starter Kit.

Les Carr's web-based Lzz at the University of Southampton is a delightful variant.  Other previous versions (Azz, Ezz, Zzz and Mantra Server) are of theoretical and historical interest but we don't have time to explain them right now.

THE MOST GENERAL DATA STRUCTURE?

We believe we have discovered the most general data structure, subsuming tables, arrays, spreadsheet and relational database, and intrinsically offering built-in visualizations and hands-on controls.

That structure we call zzstructure, or hyperthogonal structure.  Cells are connected orthogonally one-by-one, with no overall spatial coordinates.
 


  You may think of hyperthogonal structure as--

- sculptures of cells in three dimensions or more
- crossed lists in multiple dimensions
- irregular constructions of cells at right angles and side-by-side
- crystals of lists in corresponding connection
Hyperthogonal structure adheres to no formal model anybody knows.  Nobody's come up with a correct mathematical description, though a number of people have tried (without hands-on experience).

To understand this structure, try it hands-on, and build your own examples.

A NEW FRONTIER OF VISUALIZATION
Why would a data structure have built-in views?

Answer.  Just as a spreadsheet adds views and operations to a 2D table, allowing you to see and manipulate it, ZigZag adds views, operations and animations to hyperthogonal structure, allowing you to see and manipulate its rich possibilities.

ZigZag views may show any aspect of hyperthogonal structure in any way, adapting it for particular user purposes.  Designing these new views is a frontier of visualization.

Our logo says it all:

locally rational,
globally paradoxical,
yet somehow comprehensible.
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