Datavzrd: Rapid programming- and maintenance-free interactive visualization and communication of tabular data

Abstract

Tabular data, often scattered across multiple tables, is the primary output of data analyses in virtually all scientific fields. Exchange and communication of tabular data is therefore a central challenge. We present Datavzrd, a tool for creating portable, visually rich, interactive reports from tabular data in any kind of scientific discipline. Datavzrd unifies the strengths of currently common generic approaches for interactive visualization like R Shiny with the portability, ease of use and sustainability of plain spreadsheets. The generated reports do not require the maintenance of a web server nor the installation of specialized software for viewing and can simply be attached to emails, shared via cloud services, or serve as manuscript supplements. They can be specified without requiring imperative programming, thereby enabling rapid development and offering accessibility for non-computational scientists, unlocking the look and feel of dedicated manually crafted web applications without the maintenance and development burden. Datavzrd reports scale from small tables to thousands or millions of rows and offer the ability to link multiple related tables, allowing to jump between corresponding rows or hierarchically explore growing levels of detail.