The term data model in Rogue Wave® JViews Diagrammer refers to an interface that defines methods to access a hierarchy of objects with properties. This does not necessarily imply that business object types are represented by Java™ classes. If you have Java classes that represent your business object types, you can implement the data model interface on top of these; if you do not already have such Java classes, you can implement the data model interface without them.

Rogue Wave JViews Diagrammer uses the data model for information about all the business objects and creates graphic objects according to the model object states. Note that one model object is represented by at most one graphic object.

Implementing a data model to interface with existing business objects does not mean that you have to duplicate your data. You can implement an appropriate data model directly on top of your existing data objects. To do this, you must write a class that implements the IlvSDMModel interface. You can use the existing classes in the package ilog.views.sdm.model as base classes.