How to represent data in an efficient way ? (Graphically Talking)

Before going for further reading, just to let you know this question is vague and do not need one precise answer. To the contrary more answer I get better it will be for me.

The question is : How to represent data in an efficient way ?

I am not talking about representing data into a database or any lang开发者_JS百科uage.

I am talking about when a program, a report, a page needs to be shown to a user (Static - report- and Dynamic - web pages -) how one should represent the data in order to the user to catch as many information as possible from - almost - the first look. Is there any best-practices, pitfalls to avoid and stuff ?

Edit: Any book/link that can help or that treat about this subject are welcome.

"how one should represent the data in order to the user to catch as many information as possible from - almost - the first look."

To me, this screams that you need to be speaking to your end-users more. My suggestion would be to mock up the initial layout using something like Balsamiq Mockups (This can be done even if it's a public facing site). Using the mockups will help you visualise the design of the overall page.

"First-look" type views indicates a dashboard which provide overall, high level results.

Now, just to be clear, this is the design and layout of the page and don't confuse this with any web UI tools eg JqueryUI that bring fancy effects to the page.

In terms of links, my suggestion would be thoroughly read through Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications from Smashing Magazine (incl. the related links). The one that is probably most relevant is 12 Standard Screen Patterns.

It is a brilliant read and should be, IMO, added to your saved bookmarks.

Effectiveness is always matter then efficiency. Before I express my opinions, I suppose that your question already based on effective solution from user's perspective.

First, data retrieving is about the storage of computer system. If your data can reside totally in the fastest storage(like main memory), keeping data in it is a better strategy than others. But the problem about performance issue is mostly because of non-enough main memories, so the data should be retrived from secondary storages(the slower one) and replace other data in main memory, and produce what you want. So you have to deal with multi-level storage systems.

Second, when you are dealing with multi-level storage systems(as most computer systems), the efficiency ways depend on how much the reductions of access in secondary storages. It's not noly about the gain in loading data from slower storage to faster one, but also, there are sacrifices that the data get kicked out.

In XML, DOM and SAX are two extremities of dealing with multi-level storage systems. In database systems, fully cached indexes are a good solution for performance(when indexes are small enough). In operating systems, file cache is alwasy the one of the most challenging things in computer science.

You can pre-calculating some data before required. You can using more efficient data structures to improve retriving data. You can rudely allocating more main memories to your application. You can... well, buying more memory modules or SSD. Whatever solutions you choose, it's definitely art of fusion in computer science.

Algorithms, data structues, database systems, operating systems, even theories of compilers, these hard metals can help you build a sword which kicks the dragon's ass.