The manager and the grapher are graphic objects that can be embedded inside another manager or grapher. This nesting feature of Rogue Wave JViews allows you to create applications that display a graph inside another graph.

The manager and the grapher are the main classes that can contain graphic objects for displaying and manipulating in several views.

For an introduction to the manager ( IlvManager) and its subclass the grapher ( IlvGrapher), see Managers and Graphers of The Essential JViews Framework.

The following figure shows an example of nested graphs.

In this figure, the object entitled “Obtain Supplies” is a grapher (instance of IlvGrapher) that itself contains two other graphers, “deliver supplies” and “pay for supplies.” The figure shows that a manager (and a grapher) can be surrounded by a frame; in this example the three (blue) frames each display the name of the manager as a title. This type of decoration as well as the background of the submanager can be completely customized. Another feature shown in this example is the fact that links between nodes can cross subgraph boundaries. Such links are called intergraph links.

Each grapher or manager embedded inside another manager or grapher can also be displayed in several views, just like top-level managers.

A manager or grapher embedded inside another manager has two different representations: an expanded state where all the objects contained in the submanager are visible, and a collapsed state where the manager is drawn with a collapsed representation that can also be customized.