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| CAD, CAM, CAE, design, technical drawing, drafting, delineation, visualization, manufacturing | ISSN 1442-2255 : 11/7/2009 - 6:09:11 PM |
ConceptDraw World Conference
Report |
ConceptDraw World Conference ReportPart II March 29, 2002The second day of ConceptDraw World Conference was devoted to announcement and detailed presentation of using ConceptDraw as a platform for developers of corporate solutions. ConceptDraw Developer Solutions Being a powerful drawing and diagramming application, ConceptDraw serves the perfect visualization platform for development of specialized solutions. ConceptDraw Developer Solution is aimed at providing third party developers with comprehensive information and documentation on opportunities ConceptDraw products offer of corporate solutions development. As a part of ConceptDraw Developer support CS Odessa offers ConceptDraw Software Developer Kit, which contains detailed documentation, additional applications and samples of usage. The documentation contains descriptions of technologies and specification of formats implemented into ConceptDraw products, which can be used for development of specialized solutions. In particular there are descriptions of Outline, FlowData and XML formats. ConceptDraw SDK also includes samples of diverse solutions supplied together with source codes. Most of the samples are given for both Macintosh and Windows platforms. ConceptDraw SDK will be available for download and on CDs. Object TablePavel Skurtul demonstrated ConceptDraw advanced technologies, which provide with unlimited control over the properties of objects. This is the Object Parameter Table, which lets you set the values or determine the formulas for any parameter describing the object. We all know those graphic applications with lots of drawing tools and rich sets of ready-made library objects. But it is often needed to create a custom object, or make some changes in existing library object, e.g. customize a pie chart, or adjust the view of the measurement elements in a drawing. So, how to simplify this procedure? And further, how to enable the users to create objects of their own, and the third-party developers to create customizable objects for their clients' orders? The solution is the Object Parameter Table: it brings together all the parameters describing the object properties and behavior. They are conveniently grouped in sections: Transform, Geometry, Controls, Connect, Line Properties, Fill Format, Protection, Text Field, Actions, etc. You can create smart objects with control handles: by dragging the control handle, the users can customize some properties of the object (e.g. the size of a sector in a pie chart, the position of text, the form of an arrow or callout, etc.). They can also create inter-dependent objects, making the properties of an object depend on the parameters of another object according to some formulas.) For setting the formulas, ConceptDraw offers a large set of functions: mathematical, trigonometric, logical, textual, functions for all kinds of transforms and approximation, for getting the document properties, date and time, etc. So, by means of the Object Table and formulas ConceptDraw provides with extensive ways for programming the behavior of objects and creating all kinds of custom solutions. FlowData formatOleg Bocharnikov, the Product Manager of ConceptDraw v 1.x, told about the support for the FlowData format in the current versions of ConceptDraw, gave the general format description and samples of usage. The support for a textual format made the data exchange between ConceptDraw and third party applications a way more efficient. The data from textual files, generated out of ConceptDraw documents, can be read by other applications, as well as importing textual files allows ConceptDraw to visualize various data from spreadsheets, data bases and other sources. Initially, FlowData support was implemented to provide data exchange with MS Visio. Owing to its simplicity the format was selected as the basis for text files support. Unlike Visio, ConceptDraw supports both import and export of textual files, which considerably extends the data exchange opportunities. XML for ConceptDrawThis is the beginning of a new era in ConceptDraw development. XML for ConceptDraw is the crucial technology that makes it possible for developers to use ConceptDraw as a tool to visualize their data. As the binary format of ConceptDraw documents is too complex for other applications to support, an open format is needed to pass ConceptDraw data to some other program. Flow Data and Outline formats in ConceptDraw solve this problem, but their capabilities are too limited. For this purpose, XML for ConceptDraw was developed. XML allows to describe all the necessary properties of ConceptDraw documents, thus allowing a third-party application to read ConceptDraw data without losing anything. Likewise, any other program can generate XML for ConceptDraw and describe its own documents in it, and this description can be very detailed - including colors, fonts, patterns and so on. Then data from such program can be visualized in ConceptDraw. XML for ConceptDraw will be implemented in the product starting from ConceptDraw 1.8, expected to release in a couple of months. It's notable, that current version of XML for ConceptDraw is fully compatible with XML for ConceptDraw 2.0; moreover, this format was designed with the object model of ConceptDraw 2.0 in mind. So, XML for ConceptDraw is the bridge between these two versions. ConceptDraw SERVER ConceptDraw Server is a program for publishing ConceptDraw documents on the Web. It makes the ConceptDraw documents viewable through the Internet with the help of any Web browser. You already know that ConceptDraw lets you create all kinds of business and technical drawings (orgcharts, timelines, technical schemes) and export them to HTML for placing them on the Web. But in this case, two files are generated for each page: the HTML file and the picture (GIF or JPEG). This may present a difficulty when you need to update the information: you'll have to make the changes in these numerous files, and some of them are likely to be forgotten. The solution is ConceptDraw Server which lets you work with the ConceptDraw document directly. This is especially helpful for updating the documents, and, certainly, for sharing and group work. ConceptDraw Server lets you limit the access to the documents if necessary. For each document, you can associate the list of the authorized users and their passwords. It is created easily with the ConceptDraw WebAssistant: you just fill in the needed entries. The access information is stored in a separate file with the same name and the .cww extension, which is placed on the Server together with the document. You can configure the settings for ConceptDraw Server through the Control Panel: set the options for statistics, parameters for clearing the cache, and change the root directory if necessary. As to the prospects, it is planned to port ConceptDraw Server to the Macintosh and Unix platforms after the release of ConceptDraw 2.0 with its new internal engine and advanced capabilities. This will turn ConceptDraw into a powerful platform for Web development. Data VisualizationThe introduction of Flow Data format in ConceptDraw Professional, which allows for importing textual data into the program, means a new level in ConceptDraw evolution. It dramatically expanded data visualization capabilities of ConceptDraw. Now it's possible to automate creation of graphs, schemes, tables and diagrams, passing information from other applications into ConceptDraw. Notice, that Flow Format is the simplest of the means, offered to developers. XML for ConceptDraw and the built-in scripting language will give developers new, much more flexible interfaces for data exchange with other applications. A number of examples demonstrated at the conference showed the powerful possibilities of such a relatively simple format as Flow Data, which uses ConceptDraw library objects to create a document. They demonstrated the interaction of ConceptDraw with Microsoft Office applications: MS Word, MS Excel and MS Access. The examples are written in the builtin language Visual Basic for Applications. They get current information from Microsoft Office files or the local network, after which they show it in a visual way, using ConceptDraw capabilities. If the data is changed, you can update their visual representation by a couple of mouse clicks. As the users can choose the objects, used in the scheme when importing data, they can get the diagrams that look exactly as they want. That's why in some cases ConceptDraw is efficient tool, than the standard tools of common office packages. WebMapping Oleg Fokin presented samples of such custom solutions. Site Mapper is intended for building the map of a Web site. It analyses the site structure to the given depth or within the given host. The structure is saved in the Flow Data format, and then visualized in ConceptDraw Professional. Then, you can edit the visual map: add or delete elements, change their subordination and formatting (fonts, text and scale). The map can be exported to different popular formats. And by using the hyperlinks in the map, you can view the documents in the Web browser. Site Mapper is a C++ program with the fully cross-platform engine, so it works both under Windows and Mac OS/Mac OS X. The program is available in source code in two variants: with console and dialog interface. This program saves the site structure in the Flow Data format. By analyzing the structure, the program automatically selects the optimal-sized template, and adjusts the coordinates of objects representing the documents. For the links, the connectors are added. To reduce the connectors for the refer links, the latter are replaced by additional objects shown in grey. So the structure of the site becomes clear. Based on the given sample, a number of similar programs can be created: e.g. you can make a program find and map the sites having the content of given type. The source code of this sample can be adapted for local networking, databases, and for analyzing any structured data. SiteBuilder is another sample program working Web site maps. It parses the existing map of the Web site (in Flow Data), and generates a site template: a set of blank HTML documents hyperlinked according to the map. The only thing left is to fill the documents with content!
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One of the key Conference announcements was the introduction ConceptDraw Developer Solution Program made by Oleg Bocharnikov, the Product Manager of ConceptDraw v. 1.x. 
ConceptDraw Server was presented by Alexander Dymerets, the leading developer of this product. 
Users often need to visualize data automatically in ConceptDraw. Now the Professional version of ConceptDraw is enabled to exchange data with the user's custom applications by means of open formats: Outline, Flow Data, and XML. 
