User-Friendly Exploration of Highly Heterogeneous Data Lakes

The proliferation of digital data sources and formats has led to the apparition of data lakes, systems where numerous data sources coexist, with less (or no) control and coordination among the sources, than previously practised in enterprise databases and data warehouses. While most data lakes are designed for very large number of tables, ConnectionLens [2, 3] is a data lake system for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, which it integrates into a single graph; the graph can be explored via graph queries with keyword search [4] and entity path enumeration [5]. In this paper, we describe ConnectionStudio, a user-friendly platform leveraging ConnectionLens, and integrating feedback from non-expert users, in particular, journalists. Our main insights are: (i) improve and entice exploration by giving a first global view; (ii) facilitate tabular exports from the integrated graph; (iii) provide interactive means to improve the graph constructions. The insights can be used to further advance the exploration and usage of data lakes for non-IT users.