IBM ILOG Diagram for .NET

Features and benefits

Build custom displays easily

IBM ILOG Diagram for .NET enables developers to easily build user interfaces with highly-custom, data-aware graphic objects. Diagram for .NET supplies a complete set of primitives and common container objects, which can be used as-is or in combination with other graphics, to create new variations. A Microsoft Visual Studio add-in helps create and modify the controls and add behaviors to respond to actions such as mouse movements. Drawings can also be imported from many popular drawing packages used by graphic designers, such as Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape and Corel Draw and then behaviors assigned from within Visual Studio.

Benefit: Developers have a wealth of options for creating highly custom graphic objects used in the displays.

Ready-to-use controls

Diagram for .NET also comes pre-packaged with sets of graphical controls for many common application domains. The controls include support for:

Business process modeling and monitoring Provides standard flow symbols in a stylized notation, as well as the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), including swimlanes and pools.
Business activity monitoring (BAM) The library includes many types of controls for building business dashboards, including gauges, clocks, charts and buttons.
UML Class Diagram Modeler Controls for representing various UML objects and connectors.

Benefit: Developers can get started quickly, saving considerable development effort.

Examples of ready-to-use controls included in Diagram for .NET

Perfect for displaying diagrams

At the heart of the product is a highly-sophisticated data structure for representing diagrams, also called "graphs", that consist of nodes and interconnecting links.

Any graphic object can be used as a diagram node in the graph data structure. These nodes are interconnected through links. Diagram for .NET supports a variety of link types, including straight links, curved links, orthogonal links, free links and more.

Other advanced services include: link crossing detection, anchor points, nested graphs and intergraph links.

Benefits: Developers can be assured that the product is well-suited for applications dealing with all types of graphs: networks, processes, flows and technical or business diagrams.

Automatic graph layout

Diagram for .NET includes a sophisticated set of graph layout algorithms that automatically arrange the nodes and route the links, to make complex diagrams more readable. The algorithm you choose for a given layout depends on the diagrams topology and the application domain. For example, process flows are typically represented with a hierarchical layout (directed graph).

You can select from the following specialized algorithms:

The Diagram for .NET algorithms share many common goals, including:

Minimizing the number of overlapping nodes
Minimizing the number of link crossings
Minimizing the total area of the drawing
Minimizing the number of bends (in orthogonal drawings)
Maximizing the display of symmetries
Supporting incremental layout, partial layout, subgraphs, intergraph links and nested layouts

Benefits: As a result of Diagram for .NET's rich set of algorithms and accompanying services, end users will be better able to make sense of their diagrams, leading to greater satisfaction with the user interface.

Full integration with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET

The product fully leverages Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and the best practices offered by both the integrated development environment (IDE) and the .NET language. This feature allows you to seamlessly develop both the logical and graphical sides of your application from within the same environment.

Benefits: Because of the familiar working environment, developers come up to speed quickly and work more efficiently.

Customizable editors

Diagram for .NET provides three ready-to-use samples of stand-alone editors: a diagram editor, a UML class diagram editor, and a BPMN editor. These editors are provided with full source code and are designed so you can tailor them for your use.

Diagram editor
UML class diagram editor
BPMN editor

Benefits: For developers who need to deliver an editing capability to their end users, these editor samples form an ideal starting point, saving developers a large percentage of the design, human factors, and coding effort.

Support for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight

Diagram for .NET provides a library for building diagram displays that can be deployed to either the Windows Presentation Foundation or Silverlight. (WPF deployment is available for diagrams only, while Silverlight deployment applies to both diagrams and dashboards.)

For example, displays can be defined with Microsoft's Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), automatically arranged by the graph layout algorithms, and can be easily customized using the styling and templating features that other Microsoft tools (namely, Expression Design and Expression Blend) provide.

Benefits: Diagram for .NET can leverage the Microsoft tool chain for WPF and Silverlight, enabling user interface developers to reuse the platform's standardized approach for creating sophisticated diagram and dashboard displays.

Deploy to desktop or browser

Applications created with Diagram for .NET can be deployed as desktop applications for the Microsoft platform, as Windows Forms applications, or as ASP.NET Ajax-enhanced browser applications. This level of flexibility is especially useful if the same application is run on different deployment platforms.

Diagram for .NET can also be deployed to Silverlight, Microsoft's Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform, offering richly graphical, interactive diagrams and dashboards in the browser.

Benefits: Theres no need to shop around for different products for different platforms: if the requirements for deployment change, IBM ILOG Diagram for .NET has you covered.