For example, if the user has a table of United States cities with latitude and longitude columns, x and y can be assigned to the longitude and latitude values of each city. At any point, the user can select an object in the canvas and duplicate it for every row in the database table. As a result, a copy of the object appears at the x,y location of every row in the table. The user may also associate display properties of objects with columns in the table, e.g. , height, width, color, and rotation of each splash object can be derived from values in the columns of its row. DataSplash incorporates a sophisticated navigation model.
Users can pan, zoom, teleport, and link to other canvases.
Objects change representation as users zoom closer to them. DataSplash provides a unique mechanism, a layer manager, which allows end users to visually program the way objects behave during zooming. DataSplash users can automatically generate a portal for every row in a database table. Suppose the user has a canvas with a map of the United States. The user can easily specify that each city in the United States map should have a portal which goes to a map of that city.