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Software gives us different ways to view the exact same data with each "view" targeted at a specific task.

For example, in Stack Exchange, questions can be viewed in

  • The review queue where you only see questions listed which need to be reviewed
  • The main question list where everything is listed
  • Edit history pages where you can see and compare every version of a question
  • Mods have access to vote fraud tools
  • etc

Every one of those "views" is highly customized for the task at hand showing only those pieces of the data that matter at that moment.

Is there a good term to describe this feature without all the long winded explanation?

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  • 2
    Techies often call these different views.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 17:41
  • On StackExchange? Perhaps drill down report(s). If it's more graphical, you might use infographic.
    – Elliott Frisch
    Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 17:55
  • @FumbleFingers I'm looking for a term that non techies will understand easily.
    – just.another.programmer
    Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 18:20
  • @FumbleFingers - not really true. We would only use this in database talk.
    – RyeɃreḁd
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 1:23
  • 1
    @just.another.programmer I think you're missing the forest for the trees- there's nothing confusing or technical about the term "view." Re-naming it to something else would almost certainly induce confusion, after which a non-technical person would probably realize that you were referring to what he knew to be the view. The conceptual view is named after the physical view, in which objects can appear or drop from your sight; the components of the scene haven't changed, you relative position has.
    – Jack Ryan
    Commented Apr 18, 2014 at 14:58

7 Answers 7

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View strikes me as being the usual term. Other possibilities are view(ing) mode, display mode or window, depending on the exact context.

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  • I don't feel like any of those options effectively capture the fact that it's all the same data just presented differently.
    – just.another.programmer
    Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 18:21
  • Then the only other possibility I can think of is data presentation / presentation of data.
    – Erik Kowal
    Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 18:57
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I would just say the data is in a different format. Techies and non-techies can understand this.

the way in which something is arranged or set out.

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The term "perspective" comes to mind.

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  • Your answer could be improved with some explanation as to why you believe perspective would be appropriate, perhaps citing a dictionary definition or providing example passages.
    – choster
    Commented Apr 16, 2014 at 17:39
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"Layout" or "Perspective" or perhaps just "View"

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Perhaps something like "polyview" or "polyperspective"? Poly meaning multiple, and then slapping any synonym for angle/viewpoint/dimension you like.

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Perhaps "viewpoint"?

It uses the customary word "view" but like "perspective" it emphasizes that there is a whence, a position from which one is looking.

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One could say that the services you have enumerated are all abstractions of the single underlying relational database.

  • The quality of dealing with ideas rather than events
  • The process of considering something independently of its associations or attributes

The word also has special meaning in the context of computer systems/programming.

In computer science, abstraction is the process of separating ideas from specific instances of those ideas at work

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