Beyond mapping: highlighting one of our G2 customization projects

Today I’m on my way to Lausanne (Switserland) visiting a customer with whom I’ve been working during the past half year on an information system which combines multiple views and data sources (geographical, data backends, diagrams…). The application is intriguing both in its scope and in the technological ideas it boasts. In fact, it demonstrates very innovative approaches to display much information and many widgets in a constraint amount of  UI. The purpose of the whole project is to have a combined water information (inventarizaton) system which allows one to gain insights via an integrated system model approach, combining GIS, intelligent diagrams, custom reports and indicators. Let me highlight a few of the more salient features:

• the application is fully WPF and uses the composite application block to combine multiple modules
• the customizable reporting engine is quite unique and allows one to create reports at runtime by simple dragdrop. The fact that it’s home-made is astonishing.
• the integrated diagram view is based on our own G2 library and allows a user to create or visualize relationships between hostorical events, geographic data and evidence data
• the docking environment contains a wild amount of sliding panels and windows which at first can be daunting to understand and manage but in the end feel very natural and speed up the access to the many views of functions of the application
• the backend is based on WCF and the data access layer is generated via LLBLGen. Did you know LLBLGen uses Netron for its diagramming needs?
• the indicator module is just like the reporting module  home-made stuff. Both modules would for sure be very useful outside their current application boundaries and it’s somewhat sad to see so much great stuff hidden in a niche application while it could go way beyond it. Who knows how much great WPF stuff is out there in internal enterprise applications?

While the whole project is related to a particular subject (water, floods, lakes, dams, irrigation, rivers, rain…) it would work with many other subjects; production chains, ERP systems, food production systems etc. The diagramming part in particular would work well outside its current domain. The many customizations of G2 in function of this project has turned the core into a data visualization control while retaining the many features it already had. It shows in effect how G2 can be adapted with ease to embrace all sorts of project requirements.

It’s sometimes tough not to blog about the projects we work on because often customers want to keep their own developments hidden (many reasons are playing here…). I wish I could tell you about how our diagramming stuff is used together with Microsoft Surface to boast a compelling experience, how it’s used inside Microsoft Dynamics to visualize CRM relationships, how it’s used in Sharepoint to create an holistic view on information, how…but sorry I’m not allowed So, I’m glad that (for once) I was allowed to say a few words about this project. Go and have a look at the project’s website where additional info can be found.