I need a framework/library which will enable me to develop a realtime interactive graph simulation. The user must be able to dynamically add nodes and edges. I have found Prefuse and its force directed layout and I really like it. But it is not fully thread-safe, and doesn't perform all that well -- maybe it has problems with big graphs?
Are there some decent alternatives? I know about Flare, but I have no desire to learn ActionScript and would rather stick with c++/java/c#.
yFiles is a good commercial library (Java, C#, ActionScript, Javascript versions available) for interactive graph visualization, that supports wide range of layouts, and has no problems showing very big graphs. You can test its capabilities quickly by trying yEd, which is based on yFiles.
The question is a bit old but still let me introduce another commercial option for C#. GraphX for .NET PRO is capable of rendering thousands of vertices and edges simultaneously and supports variety of force-directed layouts. There is also free open-source version which is less performant but supports easy styling features.
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I am planning to build a web dashboard where I can analyze the financial records from a company through graphics, tables, ...
I already have the software, so the dashboard will only read the data, and not manipulate it.
It will be something like this, but simpler. Containing reports, graphics, options to select dates, intervals, etc.
But I am thinking, is it viable to use Clojure? And jQuery, CSS, HTML also.
Currently I work with the Luminus Web Framework for Clojure, but I am wondering if it is worth to do this in Clojure or if there are other languages that are better to do it.
Of course I am familiar with the language already, so it is a pro. But I am also open to suggestions.
It is not that hard at all! In fact, there exist great libraries which solve all the challenges involved in building a dashboard - scheduling, caching, transferring data to the client, visualization(and auto reloading).
We are working on a framework for building realtime Clojure dashboard. Have a look at https://github.com/multunus/dashboard-clj. We have used the following libraries:
Immutant's scheduler for scheduling
Core.async to simplify data flow on the backend
Sente for websocket communication
re-frame for client side state and view management
Stuart Sierra's component library for managing stateful components
In order to create beautiful visualizations you may take a look at d3 or highcharts. CLJSJS and Reagent cookbook will gives a good overview of how to use these js libraries(and many many more).
Clojure is an absolutely fantastic tool for building a web dashboard. The other answers here do a pretty good job of laying out the landscape as far as basic web technologies. On this side of things, I'll simply add I'm a big Reagent / Re-frame fan, and would go that route for React wrapper over Om.
As far as data visualizations, you may be interested in checking out Vega-Lite & Vega, which you can use from Clojure or ClojureScript (Reagent) by using a simple but flexible dataviz library I wrote called Oz:
https://github.com/metasoarous/oz
Vega-Lite & Vega are designed based on the ideas of the Grammar of Graphics, which inspired R's popular ggplot2 library. The core idea is that data visualizations should be built according to declarative descriptions of how properties of the data map to aesthetics of the visualization. Vega-Lite & Vega however take things one step further in providing a grammar of interaction, which allows for the construction of interactive data visualizations and sophisticated explorer views. Moreover, it ups the ante on the declarative nature of the GG in that Vega-Lite and Vega specifications are described as pure data (JSON), making it very in line with the data-driven philosophy of the Clojure world, and paving the way for seamless interoperability with other languages and sharing features.
Vega-Lite is more or less the higher lever, day-to-day data science tool, focusing on providing high leverage and automation based on very spartan specifications. It compiles to Vega, which is a somewhat lower level and more powerful, but less automated version of Vega-Lite. Usually starting out with Vega-Lite, and switching to Vega only as needed is sufficient.
For more on Vega & Vega-Lite see: https://vega.github.io.
I don't see any reasons why it wouldn't be viable to build a web dashboard in Clojurescript.
I suggest that you look into a library call reagent, which provides a minimalistic interface between react and clojurescript, so theoretically everything you can do with react should be possible in clojurescript/reagent (with the added benefit that it will be faster than React). You probably might be interested in reframe which is a framework for building single page applications.
React has been proven as a robust tool to build powerful UI.
You can do everything you can do in JavaScript using ClojureScript (just as you can do everything you do in Java using Clojure). So as others have commented, I would definitely recommend ClojureScript, especially since you know Clojure already. You may find out that you do not need jQuery etc.
The common choice to generate html is to use React.js via a wrapper library like:
reagent
Om
Both can generate HTML.
Reagent (and maybe re-frame) are the easiest ones to get started. Especially since there are components libraries like soda-ash, and a hiccup-like syntax.
Om (by the creator of ClojureScript), and maybe untangled are also a good choice, especially if you need to manage complex data. You can get a hiccup-like syntax via sablono.
Dashboards have been built using it (see the circleCI dashboard as a real-life dashboard example). This is the one I use personally.
Hoplon is also an interesting choice, as you mentioned.
Also have a look at cljsjs for pre-packaged js libraries.
As for the CSS, this is an orthogonal concern but yes of course you can use it (or even less and sass, there are Clojure wrappers for it). You can even generate CSS from Clojure code with garden,
You can find an example project using boot (by the same authors as hoplon), sass, reagent called saapas, but there are many more in the wild.
As you see there are many viable options in ClojureScript to build a dashboard. I am myself building one and settled on Om.next, partly because I was using React.js before.
I am looking for a tool/framework to do some simple, yet rather intensive visualization.
I have ~10000 points in a 2D space. All I need to do is plot these points, then have them animate from place to place on a second by second basis. Up until ~1000 points I was able to achieve this using Raphael.js in a web-browser, however I need a more powerful solution now.
Does anyone have any ideas where I should be looking for such a tool?
Preferred interface languages: Ruby, C, Java, Haskell or a REST API
You could give Processing a try. If you're familiar with Java and C the processing syntax should be comfortable. Alternatively there is a JavaScript version, processing.js you could try.
TK -- typically used with Tcl. A very simple cross platform GUI scripting language. I have been using it successfully for a variety of 2D UIs capable of displaying 10e6+ shapes on a canvas and have recently used it for C++ heap map visualizer GUI. Lots of cut/paste code fragments available on the wiki page. There are multiple ways to use it from within C++, including SWIG-based binding.
I am looking for resources that can provide me with a better understanding of what kind of things shaders are used for in games, what they can do, and maybe even more importantly, what they cannot. I understand how the graphics pipeline works and all that, and I have made some very basic shaders in GLSL (mostly just to replace the fixed-function pipeline functionality), but I don't yet fully understand which things are only possible with custom shaders, which things can be done more efficiently, etc. I have been able to find some examples of certain techniques, most notably lighting, but I am looking for a more higher-level overview of their usage.
Links to and explanations of certain interesting techniques, as opposed to an overview, are also appreciated (but less than an overview ;) ), preferrably in GLSL or pseudocode.
Well considering that DirectX and OpenGL have both moved towards a shader-only (i.e. no fixed-function) system, the answer to your "which effects are only possible with shaders" question could be "everything".
Some techniques that I believe were not possible/feasible without programmable shaders (or by using very specific black-box APIs) though, are:
Per-pixel lighting
Shadow mapping.
GPU skinning (i.e. matrix palette skinning) for animated meshes.
Any of the various post-process effects that are common today: bloom, SSAO, depth of field, etc.
Deferred shading.
Implementing arbitrary/"other" lighting models like Oren–Nayar, Cook–Torrance, Rim-Lighting, etc.
and the list can go on, and I'm sure some people will disagree with my assessment that these couldn't be achieved with fixed-function functionality (through hacks or various fixed-functions extensions).
What it boils down to is, before programmable shaders, a given effect had to be implemented in the hardware/driver by the vendor and it and it had to be something that could be reasonably expressed through the API. Now you can execute effectively any user-defined code you want (within the constraints of the different shader stages and other limitations of the hardware) so you have the flexibility to greatly customize your rendering pipeline and invent new techniques as you see fit.
Take a look at the first couple GPU Gems books (which can be read for free on Nvidia's website) to get a feel for the types of techniques that were showing up once programmable hardware was available.
I have been using jQuery/Prototype/ExtJs and other frameworks for last two years. These frameworks have been very useful.
I switched to YUI recently and finding the learning curve a bit too steep. Also the framework is not making my life as easy as with Extjs or Jquery.
When I consulted several other developers no one seems to be very enthusiastic about YUI. Very few of them have actually used it. Of course this depends on where I stay and what kind of people I interact with but can I say safely that YUI is not beign received as enthusiastically as jQuery? Why is it so ?
NB: I'm an engineer on the YUI team! I think you ask a great question, something I have wondered myself.
IMO, jQuery is more widespread than YUI because it is easy to sprinkle it on web pages that need simple DOM manipulations and basic AJAX or animations. That said, YUI is an extremely popular library that has historically been a favorite of more advanced developers and application builders. We do have a huge and thriving online community on yuilibrary.com -- perhaps folks are too busy writing great code to make a lot of noise? ;-)
That said, we are hearing a lot of buzz these days from jQuery folks hitting the limits of that library as they transition from throwing together simple effects to needing more maintainable, performant, and well-architected code. YUI 3 takes you from the basics to the most complex applications without missing a beat. It is a world-class platform for novices, hackers, and application developers alike: a concise, convenient, and intuitive API that is lightweight and lightning fast, PLUS a well-thought-out infrastructure and comprehensive suite of tools to help you code like a professional.
I agree that the learning curve for YUI has been high -- we are in the midst of a website redesign and writing an O'Reilly cookbook to address exactly that issue. We're also hosting our second annual YUIConf this November to unveil our latest and greatest. We've coming a long way since the days of YUI 2 and we're excited to make it as easy as possible for folks like you to ramp up on YUI 3.
Akshar -- my response is YUI-centric, for sure, but the YUI developer community is huge, enthusiastic, and growing. Check out http://yuiblog.com/blog/category/in-the-wild for some of the implementations we've seen recently. In addition to what's out there in open source, the Yahoo! home page, Yahoo! Search, Flickr, and the upcoming redesign of Yahoo! Mail are all based on YUI 3, the next generation of the library -- which has been welcomed by developers as having industrial strength power along with the concision and selector-driven syntax that makes libraries like Prototype and jQuery so fun to use. My advice: Try it out. YUI 3 is a unique, incredibly powerful library, and its 200 community contributed gallery modules (a number that grows by the week) make it one of the most comprehensive libraries out there.
As a user of both jQuery and YUI, I have to admit that I look at them in almost completely different lights. I use jQuery for custom effects, animation, interactivity on our externally-facing website. The visual extensibility of jQuery means that we can customize the look and feel of these elements to match the rest of our website. I've used YUI as a quick and easy way to develop a snazzy front interface for some of our internal applications. These internal applications are simple Apache/MySQL/PHP apps, and YUI allows for simplified data visualization, form handling, tabs, etc. without having to worry about the look and feel as much. The standardized, slightly bland interface elements are a perfect, no-nonsense approach to quickly developing and rolling out these apps.
I found the learning curve to be a bit steep myself, but the examples help out a lot.
I've been using ExtJS and JQuery for some time, but now i'm experimenting with YUI 3. I like the general idea behind YUI (modules, async loader, plugins) but some things annoy me:
lots of documentation, but some things aren't documented at all or very scarcely
some features are very basic (data grids) compared to their ExtJS counterparts.
you never know which features are there in the core, in gallery or aren't implemented at all. You need to do the research yourself.
the framework feels less coherent than ExtJS
I'm trying to find a replacement for ExtJS for building business applications, but didn't find any framework that would be as rich and complete as ExtJS. I don't like how ExtJS looks and how it forces some strange implementation/architecture decisions on you (MVC!), but have to admit it's really hard to replace.
I'm looking for a library that will layout and display graphs (i.e. network diagrams, not charts) in 3D, with some interactivity like selecting and dragging nodes, rotating the display etc. I would like to do this in a web page so Javascript or Flash are preferable, I'd also consider Java.
Having looked myself I realise the options are very limited so I'm interested to hear of any such libraries regardless of language or interactivity, even if they don't run in a browser. 3D is essential though, there are other questions on this site convering 2D libraries.
Update: please, stop adding details of 2D graph libraries. As the question states, I'm only looking for 3D libraries and there are other questions covering 2D graphs.
Walrus
Pros: great looking interactive 3D graph library, in Java.
Cons: not actively maintained, last update in 2003.
(source: caida.org)
It's C++ & SDL/OpenGL, but you might find Forg3D of interest (see also this paper).
I have no experience with it myself.
You may find this useful:
Processing is an open source
programming language and environment
for people who want to program images,
animation, and interactions.
WilmaScope is a Java 3D network editor. Nice screenshots here and here.
Starlight is a powerful 3D visualization tool I used once, several years ago (2005?) for a project. I remember it being quite powerful at the time. Then I was not concerned with a web UI. It is still actively maintained and has a separate non-government entity to handle commercial licensing.