Atavi is an interactive genealogical data visualization tool. It uses XSLT to transform XML data into Scable Vector Graphics (SVG) images. Deploy it as a Java servlet and explore visualizations from a browser that supports SVG. GEDCOM import is planned.
The goal of Atavi is to provide an interactive user interface for the exploration of genealogical data.
Paul Prescod refers to Atavi in his paper Anatomy of Dynamic SVG Web Services, which he presented at the SVG Open 2003 Conference. Here is a quote from the paper:
"Atavi is an SVG Web service that displays genealogical diagrams. It uses XSLT to transform XML genealogies into Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) images. Each person has two resources, each with a URI. One resource shows the ancestors or the person and the other shows the descendants. For instance http://mycgiserver.com/servlet/genviewer.RestServer/ancestors/I14 (Figure 1) is the ancestors URI for George V (Elizabeth [II]'s grandfather) http://mycgiserver.com/servlet/genviewer.RestServer/descendants/I14 (Figure 2) is the descendants URI. Using this mechanism it is possible to navigate through a large series of related people. References to individual views can be bookmarked, emailed or stored in a database. If there were dozens of Atavi servers around the Internet, they could all link to each other, creating a network of genealogical database views of staggering size and complexity."
Robert McKinnon demonstrated a pre-alpha version of Atavi during his Visualizing Data using SVG & XSLT presentation to the June meeting of the XML Special Interest Group of New York.
You can view a pre-alpha demo of Atavi running with a large European royal family data set. In the demo you can view visualizations of a circle of an individual's ancestors and a tree of an individual's descendants.
Atavi works using XSLT pipelines, SVG images & a REST based architecture.
