The role of the data source is to load the data to display
in the diagram, and possibly write back the data if it has been modified.
There are the following predefined types of data source:
XML data sources, which read data from an XML file and JDBC data sources,
which read data from a database through the JDBC API.
An XML file (IlvXMLDataSource)
can be in the required format, which is called diagram format, or in a custom format,
in which case XSLT files must be supplied for reading and writing.
A database (IlvJDBCDataSource)
must be JDBC-compliant. SQL is used to read and write data.
Extra types of data source can be defined to read data
from other sources.
To set the data source of a diagram component, you can
use the
setDataSource method. The following code example shows how to
use this method.
Setting an XML data source for the diagram component
IlvXMLDataSource dataSource = new IlvXMLDataSource();
dataSource.setDataURL(new URL("file:example.xml"));
diagrammer.setDataSource(dataSource);
Alternatively, you can set the data source and the style
sheet at the same time by loading a project file (see
The project).