Echo Analysis Environment for Analyzing Large, Complex Datasets

Analyzing data piecemeal is usually uninformative. Analysts need tools to evaluate multiple pieces of data simultaneously that are related by a common thread. Identifying that common thread and retrieving the relevant data can be tedious and time-consuming. To identify the data needed for a given analysis, analysts search in hard drives, share drives, and thumb drives, poring over data in spreadsheets, documents, and log files. They search for data related by certain common characteristics in their metadata (extra information about the data itself). Once the datasets have been discovered and collected, the analyst must spend time working with each dataset. The analyst converts the datasets to a common form that will permit the datasets to be processed together, meanwhile investing significant time into ensuring that the content and metadata are believable and, ultimately, trustworthy.