API Changes

• (September 06 2010) Add a flatten() method to HierarchicalGraph to flatten the hierarchical graph and transform meta edges into regular edges.
• (September 05 2010) Add destroy(Filter filter) in FilterBuilder to receive notification when a filter query is removed and clean-up.
• (September 01 2010) Add MetaEdgeBuilder in Graph SPI to allow custom builders. Add GraphSettings.setMetaEdgeBuilder() in the graph model settings.
• (August 26 2010) Modify StatisticsModel to store reports directly instead of Statistics instance. As a consequence, the model has now a getReport() and a getResult() method that UI can use. The currently running statistics can now be get with a new getRunning() method.
• (August 19 2010) Simplify and improve attribute events management. Event listeners now subscribe directly from the AttributeModel instead of AttributeTable and will receive events for all tables. Refactoring of the AttributeEvent class with AttributeTable as source and a new AttributeEventData object as data. A new SET_VALUE has been implemented for getting events when attribute values are set.
• (August 18 2010) Changes in AttributeRowFactory, the newNodeRow() method now takes the owner object NodeData as a parameter. Similarly for newEdgeRow() and newRowForTable().
• (August 17 2010) Add getEdge(Node, Node) in GraphAPI for consistency reasons.
• (August 15 2010) Changes in Processor SPI. The Processor has now setters instead of a process() method with parameters. How processors are created remains the same. Creation of a ProcessorUI interface for processors settings configuration. A ProcessorUI implementation provides a panel, which is shown when the import report is closing. The ProcessorUI also allows to disable a processor with some conditions.
• (August 13 2010) Add getColor() method in NodeDraft and EdgeDraft.
• (July 19 2010) Define the "Overview, "Data Laboratory" and "Preview" as perspectives. Create a new SPI for perspecives and perspective members. Members are simply the TopComponent that belong to a perspective. Plugins can implement PerspectiveMember to define the open and close behaviour.
• (July 16 2010) Add list/array types in Attributes API. All native types has now a related list type, except dynamic types. The list types inherits from AbstractList.
• (July 15 2010) Changes in the way Import API deals with time intervals and dynamic data. Support for dynamic attributes has been added with a new addAttributeValue() method in NodeDraft and EdgeDraft. For improving data cleanup possibilities, NodeDraftGetter and EdgeDraftgetter now returns an AttributeRow instead of a list of attribute values only. Finally to profit from latest improvements, draft elements returns directly a TimeInterval type instead of the list of slices. Methods with 'Slice' have been renamed to 'Interval' for consistency reasons.
• (July 14 2010) Add dynamic types into Attributes API. Dynamic types store values with a time interval and query can be customized with estimators. All dynamic types inherit from DynamicType
• (June 18 2010) Graph API event management improvements. The GraphEvent has now precise events, including ADD_NODES, REMOVE_NODES, ADD_EDGES, REMOVE_EDGES and VISIBLE_VIEW. A new GraphEventData interface has been created to retrieve elements related to the events.
• (June 14 2010) Export API refactoring, inspired from ImportAPI. Create an ExporterBuilder interface for exporter creation and different exporters: GraphExporter, VectorExporter, ByteExporter and CharacterExporter that covers common cases. The way exporters write data has been rationalized by using either java.io.Writer (text) or java.io.OutputStream (byte). The ExportController has been improved to support all use-cases, including file, writer and stream export.
• (June 11 2010) Add Spigot support to the ImportAPI and SPI. Like DatabaseImporter, the SpigotImporter interface is a new type of Importers. Modifications have also be made to the ImportController to support spigot import.
• (June 08 2010) Refactoring and improvements in the Import API and SPI. The refactoring aim is to solve the singleton issue with importers and let users implement builders interface that create importers instance. Therefore an ImporterBuilder interface has been created and should be registered with the @ServiceProvider annotation. The various importers types have been simplified and leave more choice to the implementations about how the input is managed. XML and Text file importers has been merged in a FileImporter interface, working with the java.io.Reader. Utility static methods, for instance get Document from Reader can now be found in a new ImportUtils class. The ImportController has been simplified for File import and now accepts java.io.Reader also. The main improvement on these modules in the support of UI components for importers. The aim is to let importers define an ImporterUI implementation to manage settings of these importers.
• (June 04 2010) Improvements in the GraphAPI identifiers management. The system is now storing String identifiers coming from users. New getters and setters methods have been created in Graph:
  • Graph.setId(Node, String)
  • Graph.setId(Edge, String)
  • Graph.getNode(String)
  • Graph.getEdge(String)
  The NodeData.setId() and EdgeData.setId() methods have been removed, compatibility can't be kept. Factory has also be changed to allow to create elements with String ID directly, as it's not possible anymore to do it from NodeData.
• (June 02 2010) Changes in AttributesAPI with event management. The lookup system in AttributeTable has been replaced by a more traditional event management system, with new AttributeEvent and AttributeListener interfaces. The dispatch implementation is also now on a separate thread.
• (May 08 2010) Changes in Import modules to separate core and user interfaces. The ImportController is now doing import task only and a new ImportControllerUI is displaying the user interface (Report Panel). The ImportControllerUI interface is located in the DesktopProject module and should be user to properly import file from Plugins. The ImportController methods could be used from the toolkit.
• (April 30 2010) Change FilterController.filter() to FilterController.filterVisible() and FilterController.select() to FilterController.selectVisible(). The controller is managing this process in a separate thread, with progress, and takes care of properties change. A more simple direct way to filter is required for headless access. The FilterController.filter() has been created and return the GraphView builded by the filter process.
• (April 24 2010) Expose basic visualization features in a newly created Visualization API. No proper visualization API exists but its creation is necessary to avoid implementation module dependencies.
• (April 17 2010) In PreviewAPI, the background color has been put in the PreviewModel. The PreviewController has been updated as well.
• (March 28 2010) Add a doImport() method in ImportController that accepts InputStream. In ImportAPI also, add getWeight() in EdgeDraft to let importers increment weight. New AttributeUtils methods. Progress in GraphAPI and ImportAPI documentation.
• (Feb 17 2010) Change in ImportAPI to support bounded time intervals. Add methods that manage TimeIntervalMin and TimeIntervalMax. Changes in GraphAPI about elements counting. Henceforth only enabled elements are counted, in node and edge counting, but also in degree methods. This counting is more logical, as it match with the number of elements returned by getNodes() and getEdges().
• (Feb 7 2010) Initial import, for 0.7alpha milestone. Half of APIs are fully documented and the rest needs to be soon. Expose only Core APIs, that plugins could need by now. Friend packages exists, in particular between Plugin and PluginUI modules but they are not shown here. Netbeans APIs documentation dependencies are missing, thus see Netbeans API Index. Due to early development status, most of APIs are still marked as under development. Moreover APIs marked as stable are also suspected to change, but with much less impact than ones marked as under development.

API List

• Attributes API - Provides access to attributes values through an efficient column/row system.
• Clustering API - API/SPI for clustering algorithms (experimental).
• DataLaboratory API - API/SPI for data laboratory features (columns manipulation, edit, ...).
• Export API - Export API/SPI provides the infrastructure for exporting data to any support and define new exporters.
• Filters API - API/SPI for filters, define and control current filtering.
• Generator API - Generator API/SPI provides the way to create and execute graph generators.
• Graph API - API for accessing the graph.
• Dynamic API - Provide features for dynamic graphs.
• Import API - Import API/SPI provides the import workflow to import data form any support.
• Layout API - Layout API/SPI provides real-time layout algorithms execution.
• LongTask API - LongTask API provides utility features for long and asynchronous task execution.
• Partition API - API for manipulating partition within data.
• Preview API - API for building the graph preview structure.
• Project API - Project API/SPI for project and worskpaces manipulation.
• Ranking API - API/SPI for ranking data values and create transformers.
• Statistics API - Statistics and Metrics API/SPI provides asynchronous algorithms execution and UI infrastructure.
• Tools API - Tool API/SPI defines interactive actions users can make with the visualization.