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What's New?
VAI has continued to work on supporting our international community of users. As was discussed in
the July LinkLetter, the menus, labels, and text associated with any
VisuaLinks component can be localized into the appropriate foreign language.
More recently, VAI has initiated the conversion of embedded text within the graphical
interface to support the appropriate language(s). Currently, the following languages
have been converted: Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, and Korean. The
following examples show several of the graphics that are ready to ship with the next
update (or be downloaded from the VAI Support Site).
As we engage other clients throughout the world, we expect to support additional languages.
We are also working with our partners to convert the training materials and related documentation
into these languages as well.
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...that you can change the colors for object states, selector boxes, and the beacon?
The  General tab of the  Main Settings window contains options that allow you set the color of the states bars, selector fill and the Beacon.
Clicking on any one of these options opens the color selector that defines how the feature looks.
You can select a color by simply clicking a color swatch, or using the HSB or RGB tabs to specify a specific color.
The following examples illustrate potential color changes.
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VisuaLinks supports a number of different output formats for printing and saving images of diagrams, link charts, tables and reports.
These formats include GIFs, JPGs, BMPs, SVGs, and many others. Additionally, VisuaLinks can generate reports using customized
XSL (eXtensible Style Language) formats. XSL is an industry standard that converts the information stored in XML files into other
formats, especially formatted for display.
Supporting XSL enables our clients, partners, and integrators to customize the information when it is
presented in a report format. In particular, the Details mode lets you set the look-and-feel of the
information displayed when performing a drill-down. To work with this functionality, the Report Memo
option must be selected (under the pull-down options available under the Details mode icon).
When an object is selected using the Details mode, VisuaLinks uses the XML report templates found in the
\clientresources\reportTemplates
directory to formats its content accordingly. In the following example, a Document Control Number (DCN) is selected to show the contents of a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR).
When the object is profiled, the Memo Reports window opens with the Reports tab displaying the
underlying attribute information for the selected objects formatted in the correct style. In
this example, the DCNReportTemplate.xml template is used to format the contents of this particular
data element to generate the following report:
As can be seen, the contents are well-formatted and even "merged" attribute details are clustered
together under the same headings. Indentation, formatting, and footnotes are all controlled via the
report template. From here, the output can be manipulated in other formats using the 3 menus located
at the top: Export, Options and Style.
Under the Export menu, the standard output formats are provided as shown:
Under the Options menu, there are two entries: Send to Word Processor and Send to Browser. Each one
exports the content of the Report tab to the application associated with the respective file extension
(.HTML and .DOC). Thus, for many of us, Microsoft Explorer or Microsoft Word will open with the contents
displayed.
Finally, the Style menu allows for the selection of alternative templates for localized or modified
formats as well as how many "lines" are considered to be printable when sending the results to an
output device. All of these style controls help make the output from VisuaLinks more customized
and robust.
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Our recent partnership with the University of Maryland's MIND Lab (see VAI News and our recent
Press Release)
will result in some new and innovative capabilities within VisuaLinks and DIG. This month's Link Chart was
actually created by the staff at the MIND Lab to show some basic approaches to integrating different sources of data.
With the new school year quickly upon us, the example given is in an academic context looking at course registration
data where the results show the process of how a student might search, navigate, and decide on what
classes to take for the semester. Importantly, the data collection process was performed utilizing a customized extractor from their web pages.
At the MIND Lab, they have started to investigate how to integrate separate data sources.
As a preliminary test, we decided to display meaningful relationships in one of the University databases,
Testudo, an interactive web service for current students,
prospective students, and alumni. Testudo provides comprehensive access to all course information
and other services such as admissions, registration, schedules, and other campus services.
The MIND Lab created several scripts to spider and parse a year's worth of course information
including instructor, section, and major course information, all by department. The information
garnered by the scripts was populated into a database and displayed in VisuaLinks.
Our example begins by searching for a particular instructor, the MIND Lab director
Professor Ashok Agrawala. As shown below, there is only a single entity (TYPE=INSTRUCTOR)
with this name.
Once identified, we wanted to see if he is scheduled to teach any classes this academic
year. In the database, the INSTRUCTOR is directly linked to SECTIONS. After walking the
database one level, we find that he will be teaching two sections of CMSC412 this coming
fall.
However, unsure of the description for this class, we want to know more detail regarding CMSC412.
Walking the database once again, we find out that it is an Operating Systems class as shown by
the COURSE icon which connects the two SECTION icons.
Users of this particular system may want to see more information, such as additional SECTIONS.
Walking the data one additional time, we discover it is a computer science class (DEPARTMENT)
and two additional SECTIONS are also available.
To make a better decision of which SECTION to register for, a student would walk the newly
identified sections to discover there was also an additional INSTRUCTOR (Professor Hicks).
This process shows how a student could make an informed decision about which class and
instructor to choose when creating their class schedule for the academic year.
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