Posts Tagged data visualization
Axiis Examples with Lots of Comments
Posted by admin in actionscript, air, data visualization, flex, tutorial on October 17th, 2009
We’ve begun using Axiis on a current client’s project. The application is loaded with graphs and charts and when we hand off the project, we needed to provide a framework for the development staff to quickly build and add new graphing components. Some of the charts are simple but there are some more complicated ones we need to build and will be built in the future. The current Flex DataViz components work fine for simple tasks. But, anyone who has had to go beyond the basics understands the pain that you quickly begin to feel.
Fortunately, I caught Tom Gonzalez’s, (BrightPoint Consulting) lecture at MAX this month and was blown away. The things they’re doing with the Axiis framework and Degrafa are off the charts! (pun intended)
I’ll leave the real discovery to you to check out the Axiis site, but, Axiis is a ’specialized framework that implements specific design patterns that can be used to create your own visualizations’. It’s not a pre-built collection of charting components. They’ve developed a great way of abstracting the basic building blocks of doing data visualization.
Axiis is currently in beta release. There are a lot of great examples on their site so check them out. If you’re new to Degrafa, it’s worth your while to do a bit of reading and check out the cool examples they have on their site as well since many of the examples use Degrafa.
Being in beta, the documentation is a work in progress. The examples from the site are great and really cover a lot of space, but I did struggle with some of the concepts at first. So I’ve taken three of the first examples we needed to borrow from and hyper-commented them for clarity.
I’ll continue to add to the collection over time.
Installing Flex 3.3 SDK + Data Visualization 3.3 SWC
Posted by brianr in flex, flex builder on April 22nd, 2009
I’ve seen a number of people ask how to install the Flex SDK 3.3 + Data Visualizations 3.3 SWC, so I thought I’d give some quick direcetions since it’s not on Adobe’s download site for the Flex 3.3 SDK.
- Download both the Flex 3.3 SDK and the Flex 3.3 Data Visualizations Components (”DVC”).
- Unzip them both somewhere on your local hard drive — I have all my SDKs for Flex in ~/dev/flex/sdks/<versionNumber>.
- Navigate into the DVC folder you just expanded and find the following files:
- ../frameworks/libs/datavisualization.swc
- ../frameworks/locale/en_US/datavisualization_rb.swc
- ../frameworks/locale/ja_JP/datavisualization_rb.swc
- ../frameworks/rsls/datavisualization_3.3.0.4852.swf
- ../frameworks/rsls/datavisualization_3.3.0.4852.swz
- ../libs/DMV-source.jar
- Now that you know where they are what you need from the DVC SDK, copy each one into the corresponding folders for the actual Flex 3.3 framework that you expanded earlier. So on my machine, I’d copy the datavisualization.swc from the DVC SDK to the Flex SDK like so:
- ~/dev/flex/sdks/3.3/flex_sdk_3/frameworks/libs/datavisualization.swc
- ~/dev/flex/sdks/datavisualization_sdk3.3/frameworks/libs/datavisualization.swc
to
- To use the new 3.3 SDK for a particular project, open up Flex Builder and click Project -> Properties -> Flex Compiler and click on the link on the right to “Configure Flex SDKs…”
-
Flex Compiler -> SDK Config
-
- Browse to the Flex 3.3 SDK you just finished unpacking and adding the DVC files to and click OK.
- You can select this new SDK as your default here or just select this as the SDK for this project.
- Done.
iLog Elixir Components Pricing
So you’re bored of the plain-jane, out-of-the-box charting components for Flex and you want to spice it up with gauges, heat maps, and 3D charts, so you check out iLog’s Elixir Data Visualization components and you say — WOW, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for!!! Now take a deep breath and read the next line:
Although the company provides a free developer environment, with watermarks mind you, the full developer environment is a whopping $799!! It gets worse. If your client has net revenue of over $5 million per year, pricing can start at $15K per year!!
Isn’t the entire Adobe CS4 suite <= $1000??? And that’s like 10 products…