DataHelicopter is a misguided tool put together in a convoluted way by sticking together my own boogers. Python made it possible for me to make a booger sculpture.

It is intended to analyze and visualize numeric and textual data that is sitting in a table in a Postgress database, accessed via PyGreSQL.

It analyzes the data by:

• first, making histograms of selected columns, using user-defined bins; it calls these histograms “slices”

• second, joining the bins of the histograms to display means, mins and maxes of the data in the original table by bin; it calles these joins “dices”.

The visualization is done using the Pivy wrapper around Coin3D. It parameterizes the display of arbitrary scenegraphs using the data in the slices and dices, or using the data in any table or view.

There are also PyQT GUIs for browsing huge tables, browsing a Postgress database, and controlling long-running database background jobs. Plus, there are classes to handle Postgres queries using subthreads and named cursors, to keep your application snappy.

Here is an explanatory screenshot with an image map: