The design and implementation of Weave: A session state driven, web-based visualization framework

In the summer of 2007, the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research (IVPR) received a small grant to create a prototype for an interactive, web-based exploratory visualization package. This prototype was to evaluate technologies that could be used to develop a state of the art web-based visualization system. The result was the foundation of the Open Indicators Consortium (OIC) a collective of not-for-profit and government agencies wanting to both explore and analyze data sets and to present results to the public. That software called Weave is now released as an open-source project that the IVPR lab will continue to develop and support for both the open source community and internal research purposes.;The Weave framework has evolved from its original design to a session-state driven architecture, offering a unique approach to the creation of session-history and collaborative enabled software applications. This thesis focuses on the original architecture and design of Weave, and how it evolved through the implementation to its current state. In order to solve the need of the OIC in both data analysis and presentation visualization, a novel customizable windowing environment was added that allows Weave to be used like a desktop software package. We also describe the unique software development process resulting from working with the OIC, which led to continuous redesign and change that forged the current state of Weave.