Concepts behind DataLab

The idea behind DataLab is to import data from an external source, edit and process the data and visualize the internal relations of the data.

As with any software it is also mandatory for a user of DataLab to comprehend the main data structures of this program in order to make efficient use of it. The data model of DataLab is rather simple and therefore is easy to understand. The data to be analyzed is stored in a single data structure, which contains the data, the row and column headings, the class attributes and the some additional information on each cell of the data matrix. All the information can be obtained and edited within the matrix viewer. The data matrix is filled in the usual way, the rows being the objects, and the columns being the variables.

The general approach for using DataLab is to load the interesting dataset (as ASC, IDT, CSV, or XLSX file) and to apply the existing tools to it. Basically, DataLab always works on the data in the memory, thus data on the harddisk won't be changed unless you explicitely store them.