Because of the interactive nature of this type of analysis, technical users need productivity software at the desktop. For lack of alternatives, many technical users have turned to financial spreadsheets or technical applications software for data manipulation and calculation. But spreadsheets are designed for displaying numbers in rows and columns to produce numerical results that may be graphed. Alternatively, technical applications software is developed and tuned to perform a highly specific task. The scientist or engineer must interact visually with graphical representations of large sets of numbers and perform calculations on them.
Users can perform small tasks as well, by manually keying data into a data table.
Using the wide range of mathematical, statistical, engineering or customized functions available in DADiSP, application specific analysis is performed on one or more views to produce graphical results. The user is free to view and manipulate data and produce output in the format needed for the application. There may be up to 100 windows on screen at once, with the ability to zoom in or out, scroll and overlay graphs as needed. In addition, any change in one window causes all dependent windows to recalculate and update. In all cases, the user can interact with the data visually through the keyboard or mouse.