DataNav Builder
DataNav Builder is the most important component of the DataNav portal application suite. The Server and Viewer apps merely serve up a remote portal's content and provide public access to that content, respectively. It is primarily within Builder that the content is actually prepared, revised, reviewed and ultimately published to a portal. As the "author" of a data hub, you will rely on Builder to: create the hub within your DataNav workspace, define each navigation view that exposes data stored in the hub, design the FypML figure template for each such view, populate each view with actual data, and arrange the views in a hierarchical tree that presents logical top-down pathways for exploring hub data. Once the hub is constructed, you will also use Builder to "test" it -- to make sure it effectively presents the data as you intended. When the hub is ready for "publication", you will again use Builder to login and mount the finished hub from your workspace onto a target portal. Finally, as changes become necessary down the line, you'll use Builder to checkout the mounted archive, make revisions to it, then check-in those revisions for others to review. [The same process applies to a figure archive, although constructing a figure archive is a far simpler task than building a data hub!]
The Builder user interface is relatively simple. It is a single-window application with a standard menu bar. Immediately below the menu bar is the application's content, divided into one or more locales. A locale is simply a place where a set of DataNav archives -- an archive vault -- is stored. There is always at least one such locale -- your local DataNav workspace; it always appears at the top of the application window. In addition, you may define up to three remote portal locales.
Each locale is represented by a titled blue rectangular panel spanning the width of the application window. The workspace locale is called Local Archives, while a portal locale's title indicates the host name for the portal server, for example: Archives on www.myportal.edu. The title bar also includes a distinctive icon near the right edge, the server path and port numbers for a portal locale, and a short status message near the left edge.
Only one locale is selected at a time. An unselected locale is represented by a title bar only, with a muted steel blue background. The selected locale, on the other hand, has a richer blue background and is significantly expanded in the vertical direction to encompass the three components with which you will interact: the primary view panel, the navigation bar, and the portal command tool bar. The view panel contains one of four possible customized editors:
The archive vault editor displays and edits the contents of the archive vault in the current selected locale.
The data hub editor displays and edits the content and structure of a data archive. Here you can add new navigation views to the hub and link them together into logical top-down exploration "pathways".
The navigation view editor displays and edits a particular navigation view chosen from the hub installed in the hub editor. This is where you will batch-load instance data that is to appear in the view, and test the operation of the view.
The figure archive editor displays and edits a figure archive. Here you can add figures to the archive, remove selected figures, rearrange the order in which the figures are presented, and revise the legend for each figure or for the archive as a whole.
DataNav Workspace Directory
A user's DataNav "workspace" is maintained in a designated directory in the user's home directory: $USER/.datanavx (where $USER is defined in the Java environment variable user.home). Included in this directory are an application settings file shared by both Figure Composer and DataNav Builder, a path cache file storing the file system paths of DataNav-specific files (primarily FypML figure files), and the backing store for the user's private collection of archives, the "archive vault". These archives are displayed and edited in Builder's "Local Archives" locale.
Only one editor appears in the view panel at a time; an animated transition will "slide" the appropriate editor into place from the left or right. For example, if you click on the thumbnail image of a data archive in the vault editor, that archive is loaded into the hub editor, which slides into view from the right-edge of the view panel. In turn, if you click on a thumb nail image of a particular navigation view in the hub editor's navigation map, that view is loaded into the navigation view editor, which again slides into view from the right. At this point, the navigation bar contains three toggle buttons, representing the editor chain: vault > data hub > navigation view. You can click on any button to switch to the corresponding editor. The tutorial in this chapter will give you a more thorough introduction to all four editors and how to navigate among them.
The navigation bar and portal tool bar appear immediately above the view panel, just under the title bar for the selected locale. The tool bar is visible only when a portal locale is selected. Use the buttons on this tool bar to define a new portal locale, discard the current portal locale (you cannot remove the workspace locale), login to or logout of the selected portal, change your password (if you are logged in, of course), and review the portal's registered users list (if you are a portal administrator, you can also add and remove registered users). Another section in this chapter will describe these and other portal actions in greater detail.
About Builder's user interface design -- "layers" and "animated transitions". As you begin to use Builder, you’ll notice that selected controls in the navigation view editor appear to lie on top of the content. In addition, "pop-up" translucent panels will expand into view over an editor's content, then shrink to nothing once you've entered the required information. This is a "layered" UI. The controls in the navigation view editor are generally hidden when the mouse leaves the editor's display area, so the user has an unobstructed view of the content. Pop-up panels appear only when you need to enter information to define a view, edit a figure legend, and so on. The always visible bottom layer is the WYSIWG ("what you see is what you get") rendering of the current content -- whether that be an archive vault, or a single data hub or figure archive within that vault, or a single view of a particular hub. All four editors include a vertical tool bar along the right edge of the content for quick access to relevant commands. By placing the UI elements needed to construct and modify the displayed content in a transparent layer on top of that content, or at least adjacent to it, an "author" can quickly evaluate and test any changes he makes to archive content from the perspective of the "reader".
In addition to layered panels, Builder employs a number of different animated transitions in its UI design. We already mentioned the slide-left and slide-right transitions which switch among the four different custom editors, and the expand/contract transitions that show and hide the pop-up input panels. In addition, when you click on the title of an unselected locale, the current locale will "roll up" so that only its title bar is visible, and then the target locale will "roll down" so that you can start exploring the archives stored in that locale.
