Oracle acquisitions

August 4th, 2010
From: SoftwareAdvice.com
In this graphic of the size, type and timeline of Oracle acquisitions:

Follow-up:
I played with the data a little myself. Unfortunately not as long as I would like since I was using Tableau and my Tableau license runs out today. Tableau was a fun way to play with the data, though I didn’t find all the knobs and dials I wanted, but here is what I had so far:
(full size at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylehailey/4946414476/sizes/o/in/photostream/ )
(full size at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kylehailey/4946414510/sizes/o/in/photostream/ )


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  1. Comments

  2. KevinKillion
    August 5th, 2010 at 18:31 | #1

    It's visually arresting, but I'm not sure there is as much actual information there as it appears on first glance. Is there any meaning to the position on the X-axis within a column? If not, then that is chartjunk.

  3. Kyle Hailey
    August 5th, 2010 at 19:48 | #2

    Nice that you mention it. I like the way this chart looks esthetically , which is not complete drivel as some might think, but there are visual interpretation issues with comparison of the sizes of circles. I find that in most cases bars are much better.
    I would have liked to have seen the chart laid out in other ways. There are several interesting possibilities using bars, groupings and colors, such as laying out the acquisitions with bars whose height represents price

    order by price high to low, color by industry

    order by price high to low, group by year, color by industry

    order by price high to low, group by industry

    I'm not sure if the place in the chart is actual date inside the year. If not, yes, it's junk, but if so, then we could also

    Order by date, color by industry

  4. Kyle Hailey
    August 5th, 2010 at 19:50 | #3

    Also bars will compress the visual information allowing correlations to be more easily seen. In the above diagram, I have a hard time taking in the whole without scrolling which makes it more difficult to consume a holistic manner.

  5. jachguate
    August 6th, 2010 at 00:45 | #4

    Don't forget Sun Microsystems is also a Database owner (for databases category) =)


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