The SwimLanes renderer

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The SwimLanes renderer displays vertical or horizontal stripes in the background of the diagram. Swimlanes are used to represent logical groups of nodes. For example, in a workflow process, each swimlane could represent a department of a company, and the activities executed within each department would be placed in the corresponding swimlane.

Swimlanes are represented graphically by vertical or horizontal rectangles that cover the whole view. Each swimlane rectangle contains (geometrically) all the nodes that belong to the swimlane. Each swimlane has a different color which can be automatically generated or customized through the style sheet. Each swimlane also has a title.

The SwimLanes renderer can be used alone, but it is most often used in conjunction with a GraphLayout renderer configured to use a hierarchical layout algorithm, because the hierarchical layout has the ability to automatically arrange the nodes of the hierarchy according to the swimlanes to which they belong.

The hierarchical layout ensures that the swimlanes do not overlap, but if no hierarchical layout is applied, or if the nodes are moved after the layout is applied, the swimlanes may overlap.

There are two versions of the SwimLanes renderer, corresponding to two different implementations. The first one, IlvSwimLaneRenderer , is a basic implementation of swimlanes, internally managed by the renderer. The second one, IlvLaneRenderer , differs from the first one in several ways:

Each lane is the graphical representation of a dedicated object in the data model. The advantage of this new implementation is that the properties of the lanes (position, size, label...) can be stored in the data model.
IlvLaneRenderer supports hierarchical swimlanes, that is, lanes containing sub-lanes. Lane containers are sometimes called “pools”.
Interactions are different (see IlvLaneRenderer below).

To select one version of the renderer or the other, specify the following in the SDM rule:

  SDM {
   SwimLanes : true;
  }

  SDM {
   Lanes : true;
  }

IlvLaneRenderer is used in the BPMN modeler.

IlvSwimLanesRenderer

Swimlanes are computed according to the value of the SwimLaneConstraints property in the style sheet. The value of this property is examined for each node, and a swimlane is created for each different value. Note that this is the same property as the one used by the GraphLayout renderer, which makes sure that the GraphLayout and SwimLanes renderers group nodes into swimlanes in the same way.

For example, the following code example defines two swimlanes: one representing the R&D department of a company, and another one representing the Sales department.

node.activity[department=”R&D”] {
   SwimLaneConstraint : “R&D Department”;
}
node.activity[department=”Sales”] {
   SwimLaneConstraint : “Sales Department”;
}

With these rules, the diagram will be divided into two swimlanes with different colors, and these will have the titles “R&D Department” and “Sales Department” .

The following table lists the properties of the SwimLanes renderer.

Global properties of the SwimLanes renderer

Property	Type	Default	Description
alpha	float	0.5	The alpha value (that is to say the transparency) of the allocated colors.
brightness	float	0.8	The brightness of the allocated colors.
defaultSwimLanes	String	`null`	Can be used to create default swimlanes in an empty diagram. The string is a comma-separated list containing the titles of the default swimlanes.
draggingEnabled	boolean	`true`	Allows you to drag a node from one swimlane to another.
hue	float	0.2	The hue with which the color allocation algorithm will start.
layer	int	0	The index of the manager layer in which the swimlane graphics will be added.
margin	int	5	The margin between two adjacent swimlanes.
saturation	float	0.5	The saturation of the allocated colors.

The following table lists the per-object rendering properties of the SwimLanes renderer.

Per-object properties of the SwimLanes renderer

Property	Type	Default	Description
SwimLaneConstraint	Object	`null`	Defines the swimlane to which the node belongs.
SwimLaneGraphic	IlvGraphic	`null`	Lets you customize the graphic object used to represent the swimlane. By default, an `IlvGeneralNode` is used.
SwimLaneLabel	String	`null`	Lets you customize the title of the swimlane. By default, the title is the value of the `SwimLaneConstraint` property.
SwimLaneColor	Color	`null`	Lets you customize the color of the swimlane. By default, the colors are allocated automatically, based on the hue, saturation, brightness, and alpha properties of the renderer.

You should set the SwimLaneGraphic , SwimLaneColor , and SwimLaneLabel properties on all nodes. Although the SwimLane Renderer makes use of only the first node in a swimlane to set these properties, you may not find it easy to keep track of which node is the first node.

See the class IlvSwimLanesRenderer for more details.

IlvLaneRenderer

The Lane Renderer defines properties to customize the created lanes.

The following table lists the properties of a lane.

Lane properties

Property	Type	Default	Description
defaultLength	float	`500`	Default length of the lanes, that is, the width if the lanes are horizontal, or the height if they are vertical.
defaultSize	float	`100`	Default size of the lanes, that is, the height if the lanes are horizontal, or the width if they are vertical.
horizontal	boolean	`true`	Lane orientation.
margin	float	`5`	Margin between the objects inside the lane and the edges of the lane.
spacing	float	10	Minimum spacing between adjacent lanes.
sublaneOffset	float	0	If the lanes are horizontal, this property changes the offset between the left side of a sublane and the left side of the parent lane. This offset is used to leave room for a label.

To create a lane, the style sheet rule that matches the lane object must contain the declaration LaneName:<name> , where <name> is the name of the lane. If this rule also creates an IlvGraphic that implements ilog.views.IlvLabelInterface , then this graphic will be the label of the lane and will appear in front of the lane. In general, the class of the lane graphic representation is ilog.views.sdm.graphic.IlvDefaultLaneGraphic , which displays vertical labels for horizontal lanes. In addition to LaneName , two more properties are then interpreted:

Lane additional properties

Property	Type	Default	Description
LaneName	string	""	Sets the matching node as a lane (or a pool) and defines its name.
LaneLength	float	defaultLength	Overrides the lane default length.
LaneSize	float	defaultSize	Overrides the lane default size.

Following is an example of a lane specification in the style sheet:

  node.Pool, node.Lane {
   // These properties define the look of pools and lanes.
   // The IlvDefaultLaneGraphic is a subclass of IlvGeneralNode
   // that can display its label vertically (when the lane is horizontal).
   //
   class : "ilog.views.sdm.graphic.IlvDefaultLaneGraphic";
   shapeType : "Rectangle";
   fillStyle : "SOLID_COLOR";
   strokeWidth : "1";
   horizontal : "true";
   label : "@Name";
   toolTipText : "@Name";
   labelPosition : "Center";
   labelSpacing : "5";
   minLabelZoom : "0";

   // This property identifies the object as a Pool or a Lane,
   // and tells the Lane renderer that it must handle it.
   //
   LaneName : "@Name";

   Anchor : "TopLeft";
   // Tell the link layout to preserve pools/lanes.
   LayoutFixed : "true";
}

The following property can be set on any node to state that it belongs to a lane.

Property	Type	Default	Description
Lane	string	""	Sets the matching object in the named lane.

Example:

node[lane] {
   Lane : "@lane";
}

This rule states that all nodes that define an attribute "lane" are assigned to the lane with the "lane" attribute value.

Lane Behavior

When editing is allowed, a lane has the following behaviors:

Nodes inside the lane can be moved anywhere. The pools and lanes resize automatically to adjust to the new node positions. Note that, to remove an object from a lane, all you need to do is remove the Lane property from the node.
The lane can be manually resized: When the mouse is close to a lane edge, a resize cursor appears, which indicates that the lane can be resized if the mouse is pressed down.

See the class IlvLaneRenderer for more details.

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Predefined renderers