Recently We've been working a lot with a product called "Thinkmap" which provides incredible data visualisation using a collection of entities which they call "Nodes" and "Edges"..
Nice Jargon but what does it mean?
Well in short it means with a little configuration you can point thinkmap at a collection of XML, flatfiles or even a full blown SQL Database at it'll create a mind map (or thinkmap!) diagram of all your data.
We really like it!
It's great for presenting products, services and more in an "easy on the eye", logical way..
We're MS SQL Buffs So heres how we Moved from XML to SQL.
I'm assuming you have the following components:
Eclipse (A Great Java IDE),
The Thinkmap Developer Package (Demo Server, Eclipse Plugins Etc),
An Instance MS SQL 2005 or 2008.
An already working thinkmap project (Reading from XML or a Flat File)
I'm also assuming your working with windows, im not sure about the directories on linux and osx but im assuming its fairly simmilar..
Step 1: Download the driver
The good people over at Thinkmap suggest you dont use the standard microsoft one but instead use an open source implementation..
You can download it here
And see the documentation here
Step 2: Put it in your app..
It goes in: yourapp/webapp/WEB-INF/lib/
Step 3: Configure your Server.Tas File
Thinkmap provide an example for you to tweak for your own devices which can be found in C://Program Files/Thinkmap.../Examples/server_sql/
Make yourself a copy (on the desktop or somewhere) and change where it says:
<datasource>
<jndi dataSourceName="java:/comp/env/jdbc/moviedb" />
</datasource>
to:
<datasource>
<jdbc driver="net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver"
url="jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://yourserver:yourport/yourdatabase;Trusted_Connection=True;"
user="yourusername"
password="yourpassword" />
</datasource>
Now go tweak the nodes and edges in server.tas to your requirements/tables/columns etc
And Replace the Server file in your project with the new one..
Enjoy!
