If you are starting a project and you want to prototype
your application rapidly, you will probably adopt the fastest way
of populating the data model.
JViews Diagrammer offers a prebuilt in-memory data
model that you can populate manually in the Designer or programmatically,
or that can be populated from XML or text (CSV) files through data
sources. Another prebuilt data model is available that can be populated
from a database using the JDBC data source. If you can use JDBC, XML,
or a flat file, you can directly import your data into the Designer.
When you consider services for populating and setting
up the map diagram, there are two cases:
If your application data is compliant
with one of the JViews Diagrammer data sources, you can easily populate
the data model using the data source facility or using the API.
If your application data is not compliant
with one of the JViews Diagrammer data sources, you should probably
create a sample of your data in an XML file or in Microsoft®
Excel®
, to emulate your data.
As soon as you can populate the data model, you can display
the map diagram using the default style sheet. Then you can define
your own styling to create specific representations.
When you develop the operational application, you can
still use the in-memory data model and one of the data sources provided
with JViews Diagrammer. This
may imply that your application can generate an XML file that JViews Diagrammer can read or that you use XSL-T to
transform your application's XML format.
If your application data is in an object model, you can
implement the data model interface of JViews Diagrammer to map your object model closely
to the data model of JViews Diagrammer. This approach requires more development,
but it prevents any data duplication, and ensures perfect synchronization
between the data and the graphics.