JViews Maps can manage accurate map data and projections for asset mapping applications. Such applications need to combine map data coming from various sources to display the operations.

In the Map Builder, you can read the data and apply the theme in an easy-to-use point-and-click editor. You can also save your map application, making the configuration settings persistent. Data and theme can be saved separately.

Reading the Data

You import different data sources into a map to provide different views of the data contained in the map. Each data source is associated with a different map layer.

For example, you might start with a shape file, to provide an uncomplicated view of the world as a backdrop.

Then you could refine the esthetic representation of the map by importing a GeoTIFF map of the world.

Street level views can be added from GeoTIFF and ESRI/Shape data sources.

JViews Maps is supplied with the Map Data disk, which includes general map formats that can be distributed free.

Themes and Styling

For each map layer you can decide its look and feel in terms of its color, thickness transparency, and so on, and you can define settings for specific zoom levels so that the look and feel changes when users zoom in and out. The look and feel of each layer and its zoom triggers represent a map theme. This is used to visualize only meaningful information for each context.

Placing Symbols

The Tools for the Job

ILOG provides a sample application, the Map Builder, that includes the data reading and writing facilities and the layer styling facilities for building themes in a point-and-click editor. The sample code is accessible and you can easily customize it.

The product also includes the Designer for JViews Diagrammer. The Designer is a point-and-click editor used for writing style rules that control the styling of nodes on the map.

You can switch easily between these tools to hone your application. Typically, you use the Map Builder to speed up application development time by reading in the data sources in different formats and then creating the map theme by styling the layers. Then you would switch to the Designer to write style rules to change the appearance of nodes depending on certain conditions and to design symbols to represent nodes on the map.

If you need more than these easy-to-use GUIs have to offer, there is a full-featured SDK for refining and customizing your application. In addition to the general mapping API of JViews Maps, you have access to the Styling and Data Mapping (SDM) package of the JViews Diagrammer API for the styling of nodes to place on a background map, and the whole of the JViews Framework API with its powerful graphics framework. You have full control over what you do.

In the application, the up-to-date data can be displayed against the background map with the appropriate symbols correctly positioned.

The key strengths of ILOG JViews Maps make it ideal for asset-mapping applications.

Since the map data and the map theme can be saved separately, the map theme can be used to style maps for different regions so that they have the same color scheme and visual properties. The final user can then reuse this theme and apply it to the appropriate data source at run time.

Map applications built with JViews Maps can be an essential part of a decision support center whether on or offline.