Tom Sawyer Perspectives
Tom Sawyer Perspectives is advanced graphics-based software for building enterprise-class data
visualization and social network analysis applications. It is a complete
Software Development Kit (SDK) with a graphics-based design and preview environment. Tom Sawyer Perspectives
combines the services of the company's visualization, layout, and analysis technology with an advanced and elegant
platform architecture. Tom Sawyer Perspectives fully implements the Tom Sawyer data visualization
reference architecture.
Design once and deploy to the Web or desktop
Tom Sawyer Perspectives enables teams to quickly develop production-quality data-oriented
visualization applications. Developers use two graphic modules — the Designer and Previewer — to build applications
around the specific types of data that drives each project. Using the Designer, they define schema, data sources,
bindings, drawing templates, views, filters, and searches and specify flexible rules for the visual representation of the data. Developers can also
use the Designer to create context menus and to specify custom toolbars, tooltips, and graphical viewing and
editing behaviors. With the Previewer, developers can iteratively view the application design without needing to
recompile. When used together, the Designer and Previewer provide an efficient round-trip process that dramatically
speeds up application development.
Tom Sawyer Perspectives is architected to enhance design sharing and reuse, and ease application maintenance through
four distinctive innovations:
- The Designer captures application design definitions in XML-based project files,
removing the need for custom application software and simplifying upgrades. As a result, design elements can be built
collaboratively, checked into repositories, shared between teams and applications, and reused more
easily in future projects.
- Tom Sawyer Perspectives applications can be designed without consideration of the deployment architecture. After
the application is designed, it can be deployed to desktop, applet, and Web Start applications, AJAX thin-client image-mapped graphics applications
that do not require plugins, to HTML5 Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) —
providing interactive client-side graphics and reducing server loads. In addition, this "design once" approach is
built to support the Apple iPad and iPhone, Google Android tablet and mobile phone applications, native Microsoft Windows
and .NET web views, Microsoft Windows Mobile, and Microsoft Windows 8 on tablets.
- The project-based definition of schemas and data integrations allows the development of applications
that are largely independent from subsequent changes in the underlying data sources. When the data sources for
an application change, only the integration definitions and bindings need to be updated. This isolation of
design from data simplifies application management tasks in enterprise environments.
- When an application design is complete, developers only need to write one or two pages of code to load the Tom Sawyer Perspectives
project and place the application components into their larger desktop or web application. Developers then link the
appropriate libraries from Tom Sawyer Perspectives to add advanced analysis and visualization into their larger system.
Tom Sawyer Perspectives provides a foundation for building enterprise-class data visualization and social network analysis
infrastructure that can dynamically update complex data from disparate data sources into a unified data model.
Further, a powerful federated data commit facility enables writing back to these data sources. New capabilities can be incrementally
added without impacting existing designs as the requirements for various applications evolve within an organization.
- Graphics-based Software – An easy-to-use design environment simplifies development tasks, such as schema definition, data integration,
drawing template definition, and filter and search design. APIs are provided for
additional customization.
- Integration with Application Data Models – Model integration APIs allow developers to populate
a Tom Sawyer Perspectives data model from an existing in-memory application data model. Tom Sawyer Perspectives also offers a model event system
that enables customer applications to listen to changes in the Tom Sawyer Perspectives data model as they occur. Customer applications can then
perform processing to keep their application data model up to date.
- Integration of Data from Many Source Types – Data integrators for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data, with federated
update and commit facilities, support using disparate and distributed data types, from sources located throughout the extended enterprise.
- Multiple Data Views – Available views include drawings, maps, tables, trees, and inspectors to facilitate the visual analysis of data and
relationships from different perspectives. By working with Tom Sawyer Software or its integration partners, charting capabilities can be
added without a complete redesign of the application.
- Several Drawing Layout Styles – Circular, hierarchical, orthogonal, and symmetric layouts enable the dynamic exploration of prominent
data relationships in a drawing view.
- Advanced Graph Analysis – Graph analysis enables next generation applications that effectively address pressing
analytic problems. Available methods include clustering and partitioning, dependency, impact and root-cause analysis, path finding,
network flow, and centrality measures, such as closeness, betweenness, and Eigenvector centrality.
- Advanced Navigation, Filters, and Search – Viewing techniques include flexible filtering, attribute-driven search, synchronized selection and highlighting,
panning and link navigation, and marquee, focal, and interactive zooming – all with high-level overview window integration. Complexity management techniques
include support for nested drawings with drill-down, collapse, and expand. These techniques, working together in a unified architecture,
provide highly interactive, easy-to-manage, and compelling visual querying applications.
- Persistence – Drawings can be stored and restored across user sessions.
- Printing and Exporting – Print preview, multi-page printing, and image export to GIF, JPEG, PDF, PNG, and SVG.
- Faster Time-to-Value – Achieve lower cost and reduce the time to develop sophisticated applications through project-based application
design. Capabilities such as rule-based filter design and attribute-driven search enable developers to build sophisticated and customized visual analysis applications with semantically
selectable views of data. Developers can focus on the behavior of the filters rather than the detailed interaction with a data model. Organizations can
exploit these capabilities to build customized applications more efficiently, to develop and deploy more powerful applications in less time, and to address
entirely new classes of problems.
- Lower Development and Management Risks – Reduce the risks of developing and managing enterprise-class applications through design
sharing, reuse, and software platform-agnostic implementations, decoupled from changes in the data sources.
- Increased Flexibility and Agility – Deploy a single application design to multiple software architectures. Expand the reach of
data visualization by deploying the same application design on the desktop, the Web, or on tablet and mobile platforms.
- Market Leading Visualization Performance and Quality – Take advantage of the software industry's best graph visualization, layout, and analysis
for unmatched drawing quality, performance, and scalability.
Tom Sawyer Perspectives meets the needs of organizations to quickly create and deploy a wide range of sophisticated and
flexible visualization and analysis applications.
Tom Sawyer Perspectives can be applied to a wide variety of industry settings, including energy, financial services, network management,
defense and intelligence, healthcare, enterprise software, and others.
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here to download a copy of the Tom Sawyer Perspectives Datasheet.
