Tom Sawyer Perspectives, Java Edition

Release 8.1.0

DateApril 18, 2018
StatusGeneral

Overview

This release introduces Tom Sawyer Graph Database Browser as part of the Tom Sawyer Perspectives product family. This new solution visualizes the data in a graph database and allows users to browse and interact with that data without the need for writing custom code. Our Graph Database Browser is the first and only end-to-end visualization application that works directly with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon Neptune — a new fully-managed graph database service — and Neo4j where users can see, analyze, and validate their data in graph databases.

With Version 8.1, you can immediately build graph visualization applications for Amazon Neptune databases with the dedicated data integration available in the Tom Sawyer Perspectives Designer.

Tom Sawyer Graph and Data Visualization has been extended with support for graph analysis algorithms integration into the Tom Sawyer Perspectives Designer without the need for writing custom code. Tom Sawyer Perspectives Designer users are able to define configuration options for the analysis algorithms and see real-time results in a drawing view.

Connector support has been improved in Tom Sawyer Graph and Data Visualization to include fixed-size connectors with slope-end routing, variable-sized connectors that automatically grow with the number of edges that are attached to them, and connectors nested within other connectors. These additional forms of connector support allow for more customized drawing views of complex structures. In addition, layout of connectors takes into account the labels of incident edges and connector labels and allows the connectors to grow accordingly. In addition, Version 8.1 has made a 65% speed improvement in the layout of nested graphs with many interdrawing edges.

Tom Sawyer Business Process now displays a process map that provides a high-level view of the processes you have defined and the relationships between these different processes. This release also provides a tree view filtering option that makes it easier to find information. The Business Process application now includes enhanced document linking and search capabilities.

Tom Sawyer Model-Based Engineering has several additions including incremental data loading and data filtering. Tom Sawyer Model-Based Engineering has been heavily re-engineered for quality and completeness.

New

Graph and Data Visualization

  • Enhanced support for direct integration of graph analysis algorithms in the Designer
  • Added support for Amazon Neptune graph databases
  • Added Amazon Neptune and Neo4j graph database schema extraction

Graph Database Browser

  • Added a new solution that allows you to view and interact with data stored in a graph database

Business Process

  • Added an overall process map viewer and editor

Model-Based Engineering

  • Added incremental data loading
  • Added algorithms for hiding objects
  • Added nested connector support
  • Added support for several edges connecting to a connector
  • Added support for Teamwork Cloud 19.0
  • Added desktop support for saving diagrams

Improvements

Graph and Data Visualization

  • Data Integration
    • Improved the processing of Cypher queries to avoid the need to specify all column names when binding to a Neo4j database
  • Views
    • 2% improvement on drawing and tree views update time
    • Improved the initial rendering of Tom Sawyer Map views
    • Alternating row colors in table views are now customizable
  • Layout
    • 65% speed improvement for nested graphs with many interdrawing edges
    • 6% speed improvement in orthogonal layout with no constraints
    • Extended our nested drawing model to support parent-child relationships between connectors
    • Improved movable connector positioning in hierarchical polyline layout
    • Improved disconnected node packing
    • Improved circular layout quality

Business Process

  • Enabled process tree filtering
  • Made improvements to document linking
  • Made search improvements

Model-Based Engineering

  • Now allows diagram tree view and all opened diagrams on the same page

System Requirements

  • These operating systems have been added:
    • Apple macOS 10.13
    • Microsoft Windows Server 2016
    • Oracle Linux 7.4
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12.2
  • These operating systems have been dropped:
    • Apple macOS 10.12
    • Oracle Linux 7.2
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3
  • These application servers have been added:
    • Eclipse Jetty 9.4.x
    • IBM WebSphere Application Server 9.0
    • Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Release 2 (v 12.2.1.3)
    • Red Hat WildFly 11
  • These application servers have been dropped:
    • Eclipse Jetty 9.2.19
    • IBM WebSphere 8.5.5
    • Oracle WebLogic Server 12c Release 2 (v 12.2.1.1)
    • Red Hat JBoss 7.1
    • Red Hat WildFly 9
  • Added support for Neo4j 3.3.3
  • Added support for GWT 2.8.2
  • Dropped support for GWT 2.8.1

Fixes

Graph and Data Visualization

  • Data Integration
    • Fixed a Gremlin integrator socket wait issue
  • Views
    • Fixed the drawing size when switching to a new drawing view tab after resizing a window
    • Fixed incorrect link navigation in the HTML5 web preview
    • Resolved a problem with child dialog boxes underneath the parent dialog box on Apple macOS
    • Editing a text tree node in web applications now requires a double-click instead of a single-click
    • Improved inspector view performance of the table model
  • Layout
    • Fixed an out-of-memory exception during orthogonal layout
    • Fixed an orthogonal layout crash
    • Improved nested hierarchical layout performance
    • Fixed incorrect edge placement in hierarchical layout with fixed connectors

Model-Based Engineering

  • Fixed an intermittent layout crash

Issues

  • The printing feature is not yet supported in Tom Sawyer Map view.
  • The overview window is not yet supported in Tom Sawyer Map view.
  • The Tom Sawyer Perspectives Designer is slow to open.
  • The Tom Sawyer Perspectives installation does not correctly populate the Microsoft Windows start menu. Use Windows Explorer to locate and run the Tom Sawyer Perspectives Designer.