Raghu Gopa
Cloud computing and big data technologies have greatly increased the use of cloud-based data pipelines for the ingestion, transformation, and analysis of large and heterogeneous datasets. The growing complexity of these pipelines, however, creates substantial challenges for their design, implementation, monitoring, and maintenance, particularly for users with limited programming expertise. Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) have been proposed as a solution that reveal in a straightforward way pictorial ecosystems that communicate with data pipelines. GUIs allow practitioners to configure complicated workflow settings without low-level code through direct visual interaction. This review describes GUI-based administration which would model and operate cloud-based data pipelines. The existing methodologies were systematically reviewed within the paper through which conceptual underpinnings, as well as implementation plans, had been outlined clearly. The survey takes into account the fundamental principles of cloud pipeline architecture, data flow modalities and the principles of GUI design and examines how the combination of these principles contributes to the level of usability, scalability and operational efficiency. Key design principles such as modularity, drag-and-drop functionality, and real-time state visualization are discussed. This discussion then assesses the functional activity of GUIs in the workflow construction, real time monitoring and data visualization and concomitantly assesses the aspects of the system that meets these characteristics, and user-contextual dashboards. The paper has also evaluated tooling and platforms as examples of pipeline governance using the GUI and compared their functionality, performance indicators, and limitations.