GRASPARC: a problem solving environment integrating computation and visualization

Visualization has proved an effective tool in the understanding of large data sets in computational science and engineering. There is growing interest today in the development of problem solving environments which integrate both visualization and the computational process which generates the data. The GRASPARC project has looked at some of the issues involved in creating such an environment. An architecture is proposed in which tools for computation and visualization can be embedded in a framework which assists in the management of the problem solving process. This framework has an integral data management facility which allows an audit trail of the experiments to be recorded. This design therefore allows not only steering but also backtracking and more complicated problem solving strategies.A number of demonstrator case studies have been implemented.