Abstract: A charting application generates a so-called timelink chart. To generate the timelink chart, the charting application renders a timeline axis representing a segment of time. The charting application further renders a business event axis in (orthogonal) relation to the timeline axis. Positions on the business event axis indicate respective types of business events that can occur. For each of multiple business events associated with a respective business activity, the charting application generates a corresponding event instance with respect to the business event axis and the timeline axis to indicate a type associated with a respective business event of the multiple business events and when the respective business event occurs in time. In a final step, the charting application generates a graphical link connecting multiple event instances (associated with the respective business activity) in the timelink chart to display a progression of the respective business activity over time.

Abstract: Techniques for increasing the amount of information that may be displayed in a graph produced by a visualization system and simplifying the specification of the information. With regard to nodes of the graph, locations relative to the displayed node at which values of attributes of the displayed node are effective may be specified. 17 locations may be specified using values that indicate compass directions and whether the location is inside or outside the boundaries of the node. Among the attributes whose locations may be specified are content attributes whose values are strings or images and action attributes which specify actions that occur in response to mousing actions at the specified locations. Specification of attributes of nodes and also of links is simplified by the use of inheritance. Also disclosed are an API for setting and reading attributes and a technique for producing compressed representations of nodes at rendering time.

Abstract: Techniques employed in displays of graphs with large numbers of nodes for viewing details of an area of interest while preserving context. The techniques take advantage of parent-child and sibling relationships. Sibling nodes and children of sibling nodes are displayed in rows. The center of interest is at the center of a row and nodes at the ends of the rows overlap. A parent node may have a node scroller associated with it for viewing the parent's child nodes one page of nodes at a time. The node scroller includes paging buttons and may also include a scroll bar with a slider. The node scroller may be displayed on the parent node itself or on the links connecting the parent node to the page of children currently being displayed. Also disclosed are details of the implementation of a preferred embodiment of the node scroller and details of an application programmer's interface (API) for creating and manipulating node scrollers.

Abstract: The present invention is an automated method and system of labeling of the axes of a graph with time based data. The present invention uses multi-level time labels to label the time axis of a graph. The invention generates a set of time labels by processing the input data; the time axis labels stores the set of data in a multi-level data structure. The multi-level data structure is processed to refine the time labels. The refining step includes adjusting the time labels so that they fit in the space provided along the axis and refining the multi-level time labels to make the labeled axis more readable. The time labels are then used to generate multi-level time labels. These multi-level time labels are used to label the axis of the graph. The invention automatically provides an effective, elegant, labeled time based graph.