Flex Open Source Data Visualization Framework: Axiis

Posted by Jon Rose on Jun 03, 2009

Sections

Architecture & Design,

Development,

Enterprise Architecture

Topics

Rich Internet Apps ,

Java ,

Web 2.0

Tags

Flex ,

ActionScript ,

Flash

A new open source addition to the Adobe Flex world is Axiis, a data visualization framework released in May under the MIT license.  Data visualization is a term frequently used to describe graphical views of application data, such as charts and graphs.

Axiis is built using Degrafa, an open source declarative graphics framework for Flex applications.  Degrafa makes it easy to draw graphics, which is heavily utilized by Axiis.  Degrafa itself is not sufficient for building a framework like Axiis because it does not have default capabilities for binding data to the visuals.  One could think of Axiis as an extension of Degrafa. 

Axiis.org illustrates it this way:

Axiis gives developers the ability to expressively define their data visualizations through concise and intuitive markup. Axiis has been designed with a specific focus on elegant code, where your code can be just as beautiful as your visual output.

WebresourcesDepot describes the framework this way:

Axiis comes with both ready-to-use visualization components & abstract layout patterns + rendering classes that makes it possible to create custom visualizations.

Axiis offers Flex developers an open source alternative to the Flex Charting Components, included with the Flash Builder Professional IDE (formerly Flex Builder Professional). That said, Axiis is not a rewrite of the Flex Charting components. It offers a new approach that allows developers to build their own visualizations, and includes a set of prebuilt components like plot / bubble graphs, waterfall charts, column charts, etc. Learn more at: http://www.axiis.org.

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