When introducing Xcelsius to a prominent client a couple of weeks ago, I was hit with a question from them that I realized was of some confusion to most people being introduced to Xcelsius.
Xcelsius is marketed as a data visualization tool that allows developers to create interactive and eye catching dashboards without the need to learn or understand a programming knowledge. I think that this is a little unfair in Xcelsius' own right.
When a client opens up Xcelsius for the very first time, they are immediately dumb struck by what they believe to be a limitation of its model -- a model in this case is a representation of the data that is displayed visually by Xcelsius' many visual components. Xcelsius uses Microsoft Excel as its underlying model, allowing developers to enter data in the every so friendly Microsoft Excel interface and then feeding them to the visual components they drag on drop on the canvas.
The problem, they presume, is that every time the model would need to be updated, the original source file would also need to be updated since in this case the model is integrated with the presentation layer -- the presentation layer being Xcelsius' visual components. Is this a correct assumption?
In a way, yes. Model changes will have to be changed from the source file in order for them to take effect, if only for the sole reason that there is not another simpler way.
Advanced developers using Xcelsius know better though (give yourself a pat on the back). Xcelsius offers us an option to bypass the integrated model problem by allowing us to specify an external data source from which the model will populate itself.
In most cases than not, this external data source will usually be a Web Service. Using a Web Service, I can utilize the programming language I am comfortable with, connect to any data source I want, and simply return whatever data I want to be visually presented.
I'll actually dedicate a series of posts on how this can be accomplished because the point of this post is to not explain or show how to do this but to just simply highlight that it can be done. Developers and clients alike should be aware that Xcelsius' model is not limited to static data entered during the development phase. That is not to say that Xcelsius is the most powerful tool of its kind on the market today, far from it. But it is powerful enough to get that data displayed visually in a most compelling, exciting, and simple way.
04 January 2009
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A Look Inside Xcelsius' Model Layer
When introducing Xcelsius to a prominent client a couple of weeks ago, I was hit with a question from them that I realized was of some confusion to most people being introduced to Xcelsius.
Xcelsius is marketed as a data visualization tool that allows developers to create interactive and eye catching dashboards without the need to learn or understand a programming knowledge. I think that this is a little unfair in Xcelsius' own right.
When a client opens up Xcelsius for the very first time, they are immediately dumb struck by what they believe to be a limitation of its model -- a model in this case is a representation of the data that is displayed visually by Xcelsius' many visual components. Xcelsius uses Microsoft Excel as its underlying model, allowing developers to enter data in the every so friendly Microsoft Excel interface and then feeding them to the visual components they drag on drop on the canvas.
The problem, they presume, is that every time the model would need to be updated, the original source file would also need to be updated since in this case the model is integrated with the presentation layer -- the presentation layer being Xcelsius' visual components. Is this a correct assumption?
In a way, yes. Model changes will have to be changed from the source file in order for them to take effect, if only for the sole reason that there is not another simpler way.
Advanced developers using Xcelsius know better though (give yourself a pat on the back). Xcelsius offers us an option to bypass the integrated model problem by allowing us to specify an external data source from which the model will populate itself.
In most cases than not, this external data source will usually be a Web Service. Using a Web Service, I can utilize the programming language I am comfortable with, connect to any data source I want, and simply return whatever data I want to be visually presented.
I'll actually dedicate a series of posts on how this can be accomplished because the point of this post is to not explain or show how to do this but to just simply highlight that it can be done. Developers and clients alike should be aware that Xcelsius' model is not limited to static data entered during the development phase. That is not to say that Xcelsius is the most powerful tool of its kind on the market today, far from it. But it is powerful enough to get that data displayed visually in a most compelling, exciting, and simple way.
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