We need to visualize BP (business process) into BPMN, but NOT by hands using modeler. We need to do it automatically in crm-web-based system written on PHP. I have input data (etc. array, xml, not care...(but not BPEL)), then I need to process it into nice BPMN graph (using SVG).
We have first nice-looking realization of it. We use matrix to draw: several times goes through matrix and optimize graph each time, no no, it working fast, but it not agile, hard to rebuilt, upgrade, add new features... We made this algorithm by ourselves (I mean we didn't find it in google or books). Problem is that we couldn't find any algorithms in the internet. I suppose we don't know correct keywords to do it. Every try returned us to BPEL vis. from BPMN, "Data flow vis." returned modelers...
Please help us to find some algorithms, or give correct keywords to find out information.
Think you're probably looking for "graph layout algorithms". The only library I'm aware of that can (I think) generate BPMN directly is the yFiles library from yWorks. It's not free. They do however offer a free application using the library that does auto-layout. Perhaps you could do some prototyping with that.
If that's not applicable, there are several other options. I'm not aware any of these can generate BPMN symbols directly; you'd have to construct the symbols. However all will auto-layout graphs according to various algorithms. Also all open source/free.
graphviz. Written in C. Quite old now but well used, stable and scalable.
tulip. Newer than graphviz. Haven't used it but heard good things about flexibility and scalability.
see also this post for javascript based options.
There are many more, just google for graph layout algorithms / libraries.
hth.
Related
Still very new to MATLAB and to programming in general, I got stuck in understanding how to best make profit from what is documented in the official MATLAB documentation in the chapter Calling External Functions. I am by now not capable to judge which of the many offered pathways might be the most effective one to go for, in terms of how easy a pathway can be learned by a beginner and which one could on the long term most easy and clear in the MATLAB code be applied over and over again.
To put it in a very practical question: as, for instance, the third party image processing function libraries ITK or OpenCV provide Java, C++, C and Python interfaces, and MATLAB has functionality to address such interfaces, which interface should a beginner in programming chose? Is one of them usable in a clearer laid out design and thus easier to get warm with and quicker to learn to apply?
I am afraid to now hear from everybody something like "well, it depends what you want to do", and my answer could only be "don´t know yet, I am learning programming and prefer to first gain some general success by going for the cleaner designed and easier to understand approach, and thus would like to get a recommendation where to start".
Please let me add this to my question and concerns: Highly respected Yair Altman states on his internet page "undocumentedmatlab.com" in the commercial for his "Undocumented Secrets of Matlab-Java Programming" book, that the Matlab programming environment would rely on Java for numerous tasks, including networking, data-processing algorithms and graphical user-interface (GUI). I derive from this statement that learning to specially connect MATLAB to JAVA will have significant advantages, THE MATHWORKS itself seem to have decided to take advantage of such connection when implementing MATLAB.
But I can also see, that THE MATHWORKS by providing for MATLAB the MEX functionality seems to lean towards a tight C/C++ incorporation, providing also MEX besides the other possibilities to call external C functions.
For me as a beginner it is now confusing to uncover which route of connectivity to external languages could be taken as the "standard" or "first to be recommended" one. Do any of you experienced programmers would have some arguments for me which route to first focus on? It is a long journey to learn programming, and I would not like to waste time on poorly recommended pathways.
This question sounds like: "I am still learning how to drive, still not a very experienced driver. Please give me your tips about how to change a flat tire, what is the best tire to get a flat tire on, passenger side rear? what are the best places to get a flat tire, is it the mall or my office parking lot or the middle of the street."
Let me give you some tips:
Changing a tire will not make you a more knowledgeable driver. You will learn very few things from doing it and it is a frustrating experience and it is not worth your time right now. Learn how to drive.
Explanation: Making MATLAB call Java/C++/C or whatever other language will not make you a better MATLAB programmer, and frankly is of secondary importance. Until the first sentence of your question isn't "I'm still new to MATLAB and programming in general" you're wasting your time. Like changing a flat tire, connecting MATLAB to other languages is not something cool, or interesting, in fact it is the opposite: it is frustrating, error prone and boring.
The day will come when you will have a flat tire. That day the location where you get it and which tire it is will become secondary. You will need to learn how to change it and you will. Trust me you will.
Explanation: You don't get to decide in what language the code that solves the exact problem you have right now is written. The same way you don't get to decide where you get the flat tire. The day will come when you already know C++ and need MATLAB to call into some C++ code (either your code or someone else's). That day you will need to learn how to write a mex file in C++ and compile it for your platform and invoke your code. Or the day will come when you need to invoke Java, and then you will learn how to call into Java.
Obsessing over this when you don't know what you need to do and you're clearly not technically equipped to do it is just a waste of time.
To Start with you can look for Interfacing MATLAB and Java (It is easiest way to learn)
Afterwards, Go for Interfacing MATLAB and C++
1. Create Classes and Gateway in C++ for MATLAB and create executable mex file
2. Create MATLAB function and Wrap in C++ (Shared C/C++ library approach)
Afterwards, Go for creating Excel Addins and Invoke those addins in Excel Sheets
Meanwhile you can look for dll referencing in C#.net application /VB.net application
Are there any tools or algorithm in Matlab or OpenCv, which will take multiple images of any object as input (from different location around the object) and produce the 3D coordinate of the object in the world.
Like Naveh said, in OpenCV the building blocks are there, but putting it together is something you would have to do.
That being said, people have generated a number of SfM tools in both C++ and Matlab. Depending on your goals there are a number of prepackaged things you can look at:
-There is a SfM Matlab Toolbox here, I have not personally used it but I've seen it a number of times.
-If you are just looking for a black-box solution, check out Visual SfM, it is a GUI-fied version of a common SfM workflow.
-A while ago I put together a guide for installing the Visual SfM components individually on Fedora, if you wanted to dig into them. I'm not sure how relevant it is now but it might help.
Regardless, you should certainly educate yourself on the processes involved in creating 3D structure from imagery. It is a complicated process with many details which need to be understood.
What you are asking for is a fully fledged structure from motion algorithm. I don't think such a thing exists in MATLAB or OpenCV right off the shelf. However, the building blocks required for such an algorithm are there.
I suggest you do some background reading to better understand what specific algorithm will suit your needs. A good place to start is in Richard Szeliski's textbook, chapter 7. A free draft is available here. This book is recommended both in general as a good computer vision textbook, and specifically as well for your question, in which Szeliski himself is quite an expert.
I have been looking around at web applications and websites with rich graphs, charts, and data visualization and for the most part have been able to determine which frameworks or tools websites are using. However I was looking over 'resumup.com' and couldn't determine what they are using. Does anyone know off hand or can you tell? It doesn't seem like any javascript framework i've seen unless its custom...is it some sort of flash or flex framework? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Marques
I apologize in advance for not being able to hyperlink everything. StackOverflow is placing a limit on the number of link I can put here. Had to shrink 9 links down to 2.
I'm not too familiar with ResumUP, so I can't speak directly to that. Though, since it is on Facebook, my guess is that it is almost certainly uses homebrewed, javascript-based visualization code.
Speaking more broadly to the web as a whole, and to the first part of your post, D3 is becoming the most popular option for web-based visualizations (particularly those that are interactive). An example of D3 that you've might have seen is The New York Times' 2013 budget visualization (and most other interactive visualizations on the NYT, for that matter). However D3 is capable of more than just making visualizations. Compare The New York Times example to Visual.ly's Inequality In America site, which is also made using D3.
For more basic visualizations like bar charts, many companies offer APIs for creating visualizations, like Google's Chart Tools. And even more don't use any toolkit. Take for instance the popular wind visualization tool by Fernanda Viegas & Martin Wattenberg. This website showing visualizations for the civil war only depends on jQuery for javascript code (and on the Google Maps API).
Other frameworks include, but are not limited to, Protovis (I'd use D3 instead), processing.js, and countless others.
I'm not sure if you have any plans on making web-based visualization tools, but if you do, I'd highly recommend using D3. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it gets you thinking about visualizations in terms of data, which can only help improve the quality of what you end up making. As an added benefit, D3 is one of the better toolkits in terms of how it treats the creation of visualizations. How you create and combine visual primitives in D3 is fairly natural. Not perfect, but definitely better than most alternatives.
Finally, on top of visualizations, the internet is abound with infographics (see Visual.ly's blog for examples). While these can theoretically be made with frameworks like D3, they are more likely than not made with Adobe Illustrator, saved as images, and then uploaded.
We are a group of students of chemical engineering mostly proficient in MATLAB and Simulink but with almost no clue of web programming.
Our idea is to develop some online examples by using interactive graphics with dynamic effects and 2D/3D simulations. We know that MATLAB has some solutions but the compilers are not available for the student version. Furthermore, we want to promote the use of free open source alternatives (SciLab, Octave, NumPy)
Ideally, we would like to use a 4GL which includes a free library for numeric analysis and combine it with graphic user interface framework for web applications.
An good example will be Easy Java Simulations that generates java code and can be easily implemented online. However, we are looking for something that can be executed without java or another plugin (see google chart tool)
Although we are willing to learn (Python, Java), we would like to start with the easiest solution towards a painless transition for a chemical engineer ;)
We will really appreciate our recommendations and suggestions!
Your best shot is to buy the product Matlab Builder NE. You can use WebFigures to seamlessly create web applications from your Matlab application.
I'm at a point in my freelance career where I've developed several web applications for small to medium sized businesses that support things such as project management, booking/reservations, and email management.
I like the work but find that eventually my applications get to a point where the overhear for maintenance is very high. I look back at code I wrote 6 months ago and find I have to spend a while just relearning how I originally coded it before I can make a fix or feature additions. I do try to practice using frameworks (I've used Zend Framework before, and am considering Django for my next project)
What techniques or strategies do you use to plan out an application that is capable of handling a lot of users without breaking and still keeping the code clean enough to maintain easily?
If anyone has any books or articles they could recommend, that would be greatly appreciated as well.
Although there are certainly good articles on that topic, none of them is a substitute of real-world experience.
Maintainability is nothing you can plan straight ahead, except on very small projects. It is something you need to take care of during the whole project. In fact, creating loads of classes and infrastructure code in advance can produce code which is even harder to understand than naive spaghetti code.
So my advise is to clean up your existing projects, by continuously refactoring them. Look at the parts which were a pain to change, and strive for simpler solutions that are easier to understand and to adjust. If the code is even too bad for that, consider rewriting it from scratch.
Don't start new projects and expect them to succeed, just because your read some more articles or used a new framework. Instead, identify the failures of your existing projects and fix their specific problems. Whenever you need to change your code, ask yourself how to restructure it to support similar changes in the future. This is what you need to do anyway, because there will be similar changes in the future.
By doing those refactorings you'll stumble across various specific questions you can ask and read articles about. That way you'll learn more than by just asking general questions and reading general articles about maintenance and frameworks.
Start cleaning up your code today. Don't defer it to your future projects.
(The same is true for documentation. Everyone's first docs were very bad. After several months they turn out to be too verbose and filled with unimportant stuff. So complement the documentation with solutions to the problems you really had, because chances are good that next year you'll be confronted with a similar problem. Those experiences will improve your writing style more than any "how to write good" style guide.)
I'd honestly recommend looking at Martin Fowlers Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. It discusses a lot of ways to make your application more organized and maintainable. In addition, I would recommend using unit testing to give you better comprehension of your code. Kent Beck's book on Test Driven Development is a great resource for learning how to address change to your code through unit tests.
To improve the maintainability you could:
If you are the sole developer then adopt a coding style and stick to it. That will give you confidence later when navigating through your own code about things you could have possibly done and the things that you absolutely wouldn't. Being confident where to look and what to look for and what not to look for will save you a lot of time.
Always take time to bring documentation up to date. Include the task into development plan; include that time into the plan as part any of change or new feature.
Keep documentation balanced: some high level diagrams, meaningful comments. Best comments tell that cannot be read from the code itself. Like business reasons or "whys" behind certain chunks of code.
Include into the plan the effort to keep code structure, folder names, namespaces, object, variable and routine names up to date and reflective of what they actually do. This will go a long way in improving maintainability. Always call a spade "spade". Avoid large chunks of code, structure it by means available within your language of choice, give chunks meaningful names.
Low coupling and high coherency. Make sure you up to date with techniques of achieving these: design by contract, dependency injection, aspects, design patterns etc.
From task management point of view you should estimate more time and charge higher rate for non-continuous pieces of work. Do not hesitate to make customer aware that you need extra time to do small non-continuous changes spread over time as opposed to bigger continuous projects and ongoing maintenance since the administration and analysis overhead is greater (you need to manage and analyse each change including impact on the existing system separately). One benefit your customer is going to get is greater life expectancy of the system. The other is accurate documentation that will preserve their option to seek someone else's help should they decide to do so. Both protect customer investment and are strong selling points.
Use source control if you don't do that already
Keep a detailed log of everything done for the customer plus any important communication (a simple computer or paper based CMS). Refresh your memory before each assignment.
Keep a log of issues left open, ideas, suggestions per customer; again refresh your memory before beginning an assignment.
Plan ahead how the post-implementation support is going to be conducted, discuss with the customer. Make your systems are easy to maintain. Plan for parameterisation, monitoring tools, in-build sanity checks. Sell post-implementation support to customer as part of the initial contract.
Expand by hiring, even if you need someone just to provide that post-implementation support, do the admin bits.
Recommended reading:
"Code Complete" by Steve Mcconnell
Anything on design patterns are included into the list of recommended reading.
The most important advice I can give having helped grow an old web application into an extremely high available, high demand web application is to encapsulate everything. - in particular
Use good MVC principles and frameworks to separate your view layer from your business logic and data model.
Use a robust persistance layer to not couple your business logic to your data model
Plan for statelessness and asynchronous behaviour.
Here is an excellent article on how eBay tackles these problems
http://www.infoq.com/articles/ebay-scalability-best-practices
Use a framework / MVC system. The more organised and centralized your code is the better.
Try using Memcache. PHP has a built in extension for it, it takes about ten minutes to set up and another twenty to put in your application. You can cache whatever you want to it - I cache all my database records in it - for every application. It does wanders.
I would recommend using a source control system such as Subversion if you aren't already.
You should consider maybe using SharePoint. It's an environment that is already designed to do all you have mentioned, and has many other features you maybe haven't thought about (but maybe you will need in the future :-) )
Here's some information from the official site.
There are 2 different SharePoint environments you can use: Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) or Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS). WSS is free and ships with Windows Server 2003, while MOSS isn't free, but has much more features and covers almost all you enterprise's needs.