Offline Model Browsing

Visualising the J2EE Management Model

Demonstrating Offline Model Browsing

This demonstration Management Applet is intended to illustrate the interactive nature of the graphical models, the automation of scene navigation and the inter-working of the 3D scene with more traditional 2D representations of the information model.

The Management Applet requires JRE 1.4.2 and assumes Java3D is installed, it weighs in at just over half a megabyte.

The Management Applet simulates some of the Enterprise Server Management behaviour, it supports Management Operations such as starting/stopping Managed Objects and Event Monitoring.

A useful feature of the technology is its ability to export a 3D snapshot of any dynamically generated graphical model as a static file. The model can be exported as either an X3D or VRML 97 encoded file. These exported files can be viewed standalone or embedded within other web content using an X3D/VRML enabled browser or using an application such as the management applet illustrated above and demonstrated below.

In addition to the graphical content the exported 3D snapshot also carries an encoding of the Management Information Model, this enables the Management Applet to build a pair of hierarchical tree representations of the management model to accompany the 3D graphical model, and through which we are able to automate scene navigation. When a managed object is selected, either directly within the 3D scene or via one of the GUI tree panels, the scene is updated so that the selected object becomes the scene's center of rotation, and the viewpoint is updated so that the object is presented centered within the viewing window.

Pet Store Enterprise Application Represents the Petstore Website J2EEApplication from the Sun Java Blueprints Pet Store Sample Application. The application is composed of a single WebModule referencing a Session Facade providing front-end access to Session and Entity Beans packaged into 6 EJB Modules.
Test Model : Ws3Ms2MeeMe A WebModule referencing 3 SessionBeans each in their own Module. The Session Beans reference EntityBeans packaged in a further 3 Modules, 2 of which reference an Entity Bean in the third Module.

As an alternative to the Management Applet the models can be viewed with a X3D/VRML enabled browser through the links below. As with the applet, when the scene initially loads it will cycle through a set of pre-defined viewpoints, unlike the applet, other than by selecting from the pre-defined viewpoints, navigation through the 3D scene must be performed manually.

An excellent free VRML browser plugin is available from www.parallelGraphics.com.