Show & Tell Informal discussion Dynamic visualization of schedule

Show & Tell Informal discussion Dynamic visualization of schedule data: DrawGantt web service by Dave Porter Do not redistribute. Data shown are examples & simulations. Does not represent an official position of my employer.

Motivation Motivation Inspired to learn and validate SVG (starting with an SVG Open paper) Transcend typical painful Powerpoint experiences Create just-in-time visuals of "gantt" project mangement archetype Create vocabulary for data content Create a set of practical and robust web service templates and patterns, support broad range of use cases Added value dimension to existing Excel, Project, and SQL data (with small marginal effort) Demonstrate data-oriented web standards and infrastructure capabilities (XML, XSLT, ASP, XMLHTTP)

Screenshot #1

Solution design Client browser IE ASV Firefox "Click here" Composite webpages (IFRAME) Web service RESTful interface Data DrawGantt .ASP Get.xsl other XSLT transforms Office 2003 XML XMLHTTP SQL Excel, Access, Project Raw XML DrawGantt .XSL View links Stand alone SVG display IFRAME XHTML views IIS, ASP, MSXML XSLT, XPath, etc. Documentation & usage homepages Database RDBMS / XML Data Interface

Demo #1 Screenshot #2

Simplified XML vocabulary Report ForwardLook BackwardLook Autorange Title . Row UID "101" Title Hyperlink Author Category Keyword . Event Title PercentComplete Keyword Hyperlink Fill . Begin 1-1-09 Text MarkerFill Hyperlink Symbol Keyword . End 12-12-10. /Event /Row /Report Typical REST-style URL http://services/drawgantt.asp ?data http://server/folder/data.xml &Forward 630&Backward 90 &transform GetExcel,ShowChildren &Autorange true &Author Porter*,Smith*

Like SVG because. Multiple browser support, single code base (with caveats) XML dialect so XSLT works like a charm to generate ASP XSLT SVG solution factored out the functional capabilities extremely well, code base is remarkably small, modular, and easy to sustain Javascript-able, CSS style-able Layering, framing, clipping, coordinate systems, and advanced graphic effects are "easy" and expressed in simple declarative specs Easy to paste in bits of graphic generated elsewhere (Visio, Inkscape, clip art) Efficient and scalable on the network

Pain points. Multi-standard and multi-tool learning curve is a barrier Some of using community are locked into parochial mindset of standalone PPT or PDF, less comfortable with a dynamic web experience. Pagination doesn't come naturally to SVG. Copy / paste not a great answer. text workarounds in SVG 1.0 are painful IE ASV is an unpopular answer. ASV is missing scrollbars Firefox font support is dicey title and desc not supported? Mixed HTML and SVG, "inline" promising but flawed, was abandoned