Thursday, October 20, 2011

V 1.1


Geo data visualization is one of the major areas affected by the rapid technology growth of modern browsers as well as client side scripting languages. It enables to develop standalone as well as distributed applications which enables to visualize large amount of geodata in informative manner.


GViz Framework is a geo data visualization framework which basically built using JavaScript and freely available visualization API's & Libraries.


It supports data source integration through data providers (e.g: Google Doc, CSV File, XML File,JSON File, XML String, JSON String, CSV String etc.) implemented in the framework and it provides extendable & simple API to write custom data providers.

The data is described using Data Set Publishing Language (DSPL) which uses a XML Schema. The Framework uses both the regular DSPL Schema with JavaScript configuration and Extended DSPL Schema to support direct configuration of Data Providers & Visualization Components (Vizcomps).To visualize data GViz utilizes existing visualization components(e.g Maps, Charts , Graphs etc.) as well as keeping the flexibility through API to add new custom components.Few of the features of GViz is categorized as below,
  • Rich set of popular components
  • Configurable visualization
  • Facilitate data binding to sources
  • Easy integration
  • Independent from server side technology
Using GViz Framework consists of following steps,

  1. Step 1: Prepare DSPL
  2. Step 2: Prepare HTML Structure
  3. ¡Step 3: Add Gviz framework JavaScript to webpage

JavaScript Introduction


JavaScript is the most popular scripting language on the internet, and works in all major browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari. JavaScript is an implementation of the language standard. ECMA-262 is the official JavaScript standard. "JavaScript" is also a trademark of Oracle Corporation.
If you are new to JavaScript you can go through the introduction tutorial provided by w3schools
Executing JavaScript
  • JavaScript can be executed in the web browser's address bar directly. Type javascript: followed by your JavaScript code
  •  If you are using Google Chrome Browser you can use the CTRL + SHIFT + J to open JavaScript Console where you can directly execute JavaScript.
  •  For Firefox browser you can install Firebug as an Addon to develop and execute JavaScript.
Although JavaScript is commonly used as snippets of code to add interactivity for webpages you can use it to build very sophisticated components such as Interactive Charts, Tables, Maps etc.Use of Object Oriented Concepts with JavaScript will make it more practical to deal with the complexity of the code.