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ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1
Released in November, 2007, ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 provides a native Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) plug-in for developers working in Eclipse, a new palette of chart types for use with the editors, improved thin-client support, significant performance enhancements, and more.
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 requires Java Platform, Standard Edition, version 5.0 or later.
Eclipse graph layout plug-in
An entirely new graph layout service has been added to ILOG JViews Diagrammer, for developers who prefer to work with native SWT. This service, called ILOG JViews Graph Layout for the Eclipse Graphical Editing Framework (GEF), provides a comprehensive alternative to the graph layout algorithms provided by GEF. It helps developers take advantage of the rich feature set of JViews Diagrammer's algorithms without requiring them to use AWT for drawing.
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 provides an integration sample in addition to the advanced programming interface (API).
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New chart types
A new palette of over 20 types of charts has been added to the Dashboard Editor. A valid ILOG JViews Charts license is required to access these charts. They are ideally suited for use in business dashboard applications, where they are often used to show key performance indicators (KPIs).
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Better thin client support
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 provides improvements when deploying to a browser, for both thin clients and applets. For example, the size of the JavaScript files loaded when using the thin client JavaServer Faces has been reduced by a factor of four. Improved BeanInfo and resource bundle loading has reduced the number of roundtrips to the server upon applet startup by approximately 25 to 50 percent. Integration with Ajax frameworks has been enhanced.
Performance enhancements
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 provides the following performance enhancements:
- Faster loading time for the Dashboard Editor
A binary file format has been added to the Dashboard Editor to complement the XML file version, improving loading time by a factor of five.
- Improved styling
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 provides performance improvements to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The time it takes to render 10,000 complex nodes in a diagram, for example, has been reduced from 1.3 seconds to under 0.9 seconds—approximately 50 percent faster. Further enhancements have been made to CSS execution and expression evaluation.
- Enhanced base level drawing operations
Many base level drawing operations have been enhanced. You will notice a faster selection of objects—especially when displaying large sets of data, faster scrolling (up to ten times faster with large data sets), smoother animation (up to four times faster) of moving objects, and highly improved link drawing.
A new demonstration shows the enhanced performance of hundreds of complex symbols, such as gauges.
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Other improvements
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 provides several other enhnacements, such as:
- A better SWT-to-AWT Eclipse bridge
ILOG JViews Diagrammer previously offered a Java Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) solution for developers creating advanced graphics in an Eclipse environment. It uses the SWT-to-AWT bridge, providing an AWT canvas within the greater SWT application. ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1 improves the AWT solution with a new set of utilities.
- Layout improvements
New optional leveling strategies are available when you use the hierarchical layout.
- New interactivity
Hover highlighting has been added to ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.1. It provides graphical feedback when a pointer moves over a graphic object.
- Enhanced design tools
The Symbol Editor, the Dashboard Editor, and Designer have been optimized for a better user experience. Changes include: menu re-configuration, a new palette look and feel, improved palette interaction, new wizards and more.
- A new software development kit (SDK) demo
A new demo explains how to define and populate a data model, apply a style defined with Designer, and perform common management operations on the resulting diagram.
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Previous Release ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.0
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.0 was released in December, 2006.
Easier symbol creation for real-world objects
ILOG JViews 8.0 introduced the Symbol Editor. This tool—for use with JViews Diagrammer, Maps and Maps for Defense—makes it easier than ever to create an application’s graphical symbols. With other solutions, Java developers must create symbols with code or a crude editor. The Symbol Editor lets graphic designers use their favorite drawing tools (such as Adobe Illustrator) to design the static aspects of symbols, and Java developers can then use the point-and-click editor to quickly and easily animate them.
Elaborate sets of symbols can be created for each application domain, and then organized in palettes for later use. ILOG JViews 8.0 comes equipped with a variety of pre-built symbol sets, such as workflow icons, application/network/traffic management symbols, and a collection of intelligent controls, such as gauges, sliders, progress bars and dials.
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Examples of symbols and symbol editing.
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For more information about the Symbol Editor and how it is used with other JViews Diagrammer tools, please see the Diagrammer Tool Chain Overview.
Industrial and business dashboard support
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.0 introduced the Dashboard Editor, for the easy creation of industrial and business dashboards. It allows users to draw or import static backgrounds, drag and drop symbols (created with the Symbol Editor) on top of backgrounds, and connect them to the underlying data—all without Java coding. JViews dashboards can be deployed as desktop clients or within browsers as applets or thin clients that take advantage of innovative Ajax technology.
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Examples of dashboards and dashboard editing.
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For more information about the Dashboard Editor and how it is used with other JViews Diagrammer tools, please see the Diagrammer Tool chain Overview.
Ajax-enhanced graphical displays
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.0 facilitated the creation of Ajax visual editing and monitoring applications, including diagramming tools for editing processes, flows, and networks; and for visualizing complex relationships with automatic graph layouts.
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Examples of rich Web and Ajax applications with JViews.
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Scalability and performance
Performance and graphical accuracy are important components of demanding visual applications. JViews Diagrammer 8.0 introduced new techniques to support the management and display of vary large datasets. A new mechanism has been added to support the fast creation of thousands of lightweight business objects. With JViews Diagrammer 8.0, these objects can be refined on demand, based on the context of the application.
In parallel, graphic objects natively support different levels of details, addressing both performance and graphical accuracy, and minimizing clutter. For example, based on the zoom factor, the same business object can be displayed larger or smaller, with more or less decorations based on the zoom control. When associating both flexible business objects and adaptable graphics, most performance issues can be addressed in an efficient way.
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Hypergraphs
ILOG JViews Diagrammer 8.0 introduced the hypergraph, a new data structure for graphs. The connections for such graphs, or hyperedges, can connect multiple source nodes with multiple destination nodes. Hypergraphs allow developers to create representations typically used in applications, such as electrical diagrams, network management, and unified modeling language (UML) diagrams.
ILOG Jviews Diagrammer 8.0 provided many advanced features, such as segmented (polyline) hyperedges and nested graphs with intergraph hyperedges.
Other enhancements
For the complete list of features, or for more technical details, please refer to the JViews Diagrammer 8.0 reference guide.
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