RIA Prototype Client Using BlazeDS Messaging and JMS - Flex Client
In a previous posting I gave an overview of the dashboard client that I created to investigate BlazeDS messaging with Flex clients. This posting focuses specifically on the Flex client.
One of the purposes of an application dashboard is to provide the user a means of rapidly discerning the state of an application using data visualization. I couldn’t think of a better use of Flex and than visualizing data! I am partial to real-time strip chart plots since you can monitor the history of operational parameters over a period of time. I am also partial to bar type meter that show the current value of a parameter and maybe even a high water mark. I envisioned a final dashboard application with many such strip charts and bar meters. The first objective of the prototype was to scope out an efficient way of displaying data for one set of metrics.
Charting Components
I wanted to try out some of the stock Flex charting components since I had never had the opportunity to work with them before. The LineChart component looked like a perfect component to use to draw my data in real time. Unfortunately, the LineChart does not allow you to present data in the same way that say the Windows performance monitor does as shown below.
You basically have the choice of moving the whole chart as the performance monitor does or moving the data plot as you can with the bar chart component. Once I got over my preconceived notions of how a strip chart should work I found the LineChart to be perfectly adequate. The following show the LineChart component in the dashboard demo.
Although the stock LineChart component appears adequate for my purposes, I’m still a bit tempted to try to construct a strip chart component. After checking out the Degrafa web site, it looks like degrafa may be a good tool set to use in constructing a moving strip chart. I suppose I can also make my LineChart appear a bit more polished through CSS. Unfortunately, making UIs look pretty has not been in my job description up until this point so I have a bit to learn.
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