Introducing the Network Component

Graphic Components > Network Component > Introducing the Network Component

Introducing the Network Component

The network component is based on the Swing network component. It allows you to display data in the form of a graph representing nodes connected by links on top of a background map. The nodes may appear collapsed or expanded to reveal their child objects.

The network component is connected to a data source, from which it obtains the business objects to be displayed. By default, the network displays all the objects contained in the data source. However, it is also possible to restrict the contents displayed by:

selecting the root nodes to be shown,
applying a filter,
specifying the business classes to be accepted or excluded by the component,
specifying whether nodes are expandable or not (load on demand).

Objects that do not have a parent are displayed as root nodes, while the others are displayed under their parent.

The network component offers the following notable features:

Filtering capabilities

The network component allows you to filter the nodes that are displayed. That is, the business objects present in the attached data source are only displayed if they are accepted by the current filter.

Interaction support

You can interact with the network view as a whole as well as with individual objects.

Load on demand

The network component supports load on demand for the business objects to be displayed. This means that the graphic representation of a given business object is only created when its parent object is expanded through code or through user interaction. By default, load on demand is customized through the CSS property expansion (see Customizing the Expansion of Business Objects in the Styling documentation). More advanced customization can be performed at the adapter level (see Expansion strategy).

Layout capabilities

You can perform node, link and label layouts.

Zooming capabilities

There are three zoom policies: physical, logical, and mixed.

Background support

The network component allows you to display maps in the background.

The network component is implemented by the class IlpNetwork, which is a Swing JComponent that can be directly inserted into a panel (JPanel).

IlpNetwork provides the API for the most common uses of the network component, such as:

IlpNetwork also acts as a façade for a number of lower-level components that it contains. These components provide more detailed APIs and advanced services. They are described in Architecture of the Network Component of this section.

The information presented in this section is based on samples of typical network applications.

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