LCFGVisualizer User Manual
Contents
1. prefield8 profile group lt PreferredFields gt lt CGISpecific gt Fields used for the CGI Fill in the path where you want the vrml file to be generated vrmloutputfile var www output lt CGISpecific gt 12 3 4 Generating visualizations Start your browser and browse to the url where you have placed the cgi files for instance http localhost cgi bin index cgi You should see a web page similar to figure 3 1 Choose your desired visualization technique Mozilla Firefox Fil Rediger Vis Historikk Bokmerker Verkt y Hjelp lt a X M amp Gt LJ http localhost coi binfindex cai gt Please select visualization technique Figure 3 1 Start page 13 From the menu choose a visualization technique See 3 5 for a discussion about the visualization types In this example we choose between groups On the next page select how many criterias to visualize Between groups only Click the submit button to continue From the drop down lists select the components you want then press the submit button Mozilla Firefox Fil Rediger is Historikk Bokmerker Verkt y Hjelp lt a X e fa LJ http localhost cgi bin group Visualization cgi nrOfCrits 3 amp Submit fields Submit fields amp caifields nrOFCr gt Visualization between groups ur tables and criterias network hd Table 3 Figure 3 2 Select components 14 Choose the desired fields In this example we will be generating a v2. lt Directory gt Where installation path is the path to your unzipped LCFGVisualizer folder In the root folder www of the Apache Webserver create a new folder called output On nix systems the folder must be writable by the Apache user This output folder is where the generated visualization files will go and will be referenced to as output folder Edit cfg vscd cfg using your favorite editor and find the section called CGISpecific Make sure vrmloutputfile is set to the full system path of your output folder for instance vrmloutputfile var www output Depending on the path to your Perl executable you might need to edit the cgi files inside installation path cgi Default value is usr bin perl on a Windows system you need to change this to reflect the path to Perl exe 3 2 Importing XML data Prerequisites Before extracting data into the database some things should be prepared in a proper way Each set of XML files you want to import should be placed in a separate directory It is also a good idea to start with importing the oldest data sets first The name of the XML file in conjunction with the lcfg last modified field will be used as primary keys in the database A MySQL database server should be up and running Create an empty database to hold the imported data Make sure the system requirements are met see SRS section 2 1 Edit the config file cfg vesd cfg to fit your system and needs Specifically make sure the
3. 7 Chapter 3 User guide 3 1 Installing LCFGVisualizer LCFG Visualizer has been successfully installed on systems running Linux and Windows XP Vista Please refer to the System Requirement Specification in section 2 1 for a complete discussion of Hardware and Software requirements Simply put you need a computer running an apache compatible webserver which is capable of running Perl CGI scripts You also need access to a MySQL database and the Perl LibXML library must be installed On Linux Unix refer to your package manager for instructions on how to install these dependencies On Windows we recommend using ActivePerl and WAMP LibXML for Windows can be found at cpan Unzip LCFGVisualizer zip to a desired path we will refer to this path as the installation path You need to configure your Apache Server to serve the CGI scripts located in the installation path cgi folder In short terms you need the following lines in the loadModule section of httpd conf LoadModule alias_module modules mod_alias so LoadModule cgi_module modules mod_cgi so And in the section lt IfModule alias_module gt add the following lines ScriptAlias cgi bin installation path cgi lt Directory installation path cgi gt AllowOverride None http www activestate com http www en wampserver com 3http cpan uwinnipeg ca PPMPackages 10xx Options ExecCGI Indexes Order allow deny Allow from all AddHandler cgi script cgi pl
4. database section matches your database server and the tablename you just created For further information about vcsd cfg see section 3 3 3 2 1 Initial import When the config file is fully configured with the desired components the extraction of data into the database can begin Open the LCFGVisualizer folder and change directory into the folder named XML_to_DB Run the Perl file XML_to_DB pl in a terminal or on a command line If everything is correctly configured this should run smoothly For each main component e g lt inv gt this operation shoould take approximately one minute on a system with 1000 XML files depending on the hardware and LAN Internet speed if the database is located externally The script will print the parameters and child values chosen to screen Confirm by pressing enter for each main component The script will now print the number of files found in the folder press any key to continue the import If some XML files is not well formed or have errors the script will print a warning and the corrupt file will not be imported When finished the script will print the number of errors encountered if any and the time elapsed You have now imported a dataset and may go on to adding further data sets see 3 2 2 or skip to the visualization part see 3 4 3 2 2 Appending newer data sets To append more datasets to the database just edit vcsd cfg and set the xmlpath variable to reflect the folder you want t
5. red shows all the nodes found in the database The second layer shows the number of nodes fulfilling the first criteria and the third layer shows the number of nodes fulfilling both first and second criteria The HUD menu allows individual steps to be shown or hidden and also allows the viewpoint to be changed Additional information about a step is shown when the cursor is placed over the step 3 5 4 Node visualizer Criteria needed Two This technique compares two computers based upon their compo nents The visualization consists of two spheres the nodes and a grid of components Arrows are drawn from the nodes to their belonging compo nents and a component value shared by both nodes will be drawn in red see figures 4 4 and 4 3 One can inspect the dots connected to the components by placing the cursor over them which triggers the key value pair to be dis played in the HUD menu One can also toggle the arrows belonging to one or both the nodes on and off by clicking the proper values in the HUD menu 3 5 5 Spiral Criteria needed One This technique generates spheres for every unique value found in the criteria given see fugure 4 5 The sphere radius is decided by the number of nodes sharing the configuration The result is shown as a spiral where the biggest clusters are placed in the middle Each and every change in a single machine s configuration is shown as a slight colour change of the belonging sphere group Dependin
6. PyramidVisualizer e SpiralVisualizer e NodeVisualizer The visualizer modules depend on the following modules Dependencies DAL pm VRML_Generator pm 4 1 3 VRML_Generator The VRML Generator is the largest module and is used by all the visualization modules Its main task is to generate valid VRML strings based on the attributes and method calls in the visualization modules It is divided into different sections Utility methods These are methods that can be used by any visualization such as setting color values generating vector positions printing routes and converting strings to VRML safe syntax General VRML methods These methods are also generic methods that generate valid VRML code from desired parameters Many common VRML nodes can be generated including Timer Transform Group Interpolator and Text 20 Proto methods Generates valid Proto nodes static strings Proto nodes are definitions built by VRML nodes fields and Scripts Used to define MachineNodes viewpoints and menuitems and their attributes Specific methods for each visualization technique This section contains methods used by only one specific visualization module 4 1 4 DAL The Data Access Layer Connects to the database Files DAL pm Dependencies DBI 4 2 Bugs amp known issues Web browser freezes crashes On some systems the octaga web browser plugin does not work Web browser Internet Explorer 7 0 573
7. cfg is shown here VCSD Configuration file Configure with care This is just a sample file lt Databaselnfo gt db lcfg dbtype mySQL dbhost localhost dbuser username dbpass password dbport 3306 lt Databaselnfo gt lt PathToFiles gt Uncomment one of these variables below xmlpath home moby profiles 2008 03 05 lt PathToFiles gt lt Namespace gt namespace http www lcfg org namespace profile 1 0 lt Namespace gt lt Component gt Which components to import from the XML files These components must be written like comp lt number gt comp childcomp where lt number gt is an unique integer doesn t need to be in order and comp childcomp is an XPath expression one profile component such as profile domain is mandatory comp1 inv domain 11 comp2 inv location comp3 inv manager comp4 inv model comp5 inv os comp6 inv owner comp7 inv sno comp8 network extrahosts comp9 network gateway comp10 network gatewaydev comp17 xinetd enableservices comp22 profile domain MANDATORY lt Component gt lt PreferredFields gt The fields used to display information about one specific node These fields will be collected out of the database generated not the xml file Hence it is important that these values also exist in the components section prefieldi inv manager prefield2 inv owner prefield3 inv location prefield4 inv sno prefield5 inv model prefield6 inv os prefield7 network gateway
8. 0 11 Solution Change browser use firefox Platform Systems running Windows XP SP2 Internet Explorer 7 0 5730 11 Octaga player 2 2 0 12 Octaga Player for Linux can not embed VRML This is expected to be fixed when Octaga releases Octaga Player 2 2 for Linux Octaga Player for Windows uses 100 CPU On some systems Octaga uses a lot of resources This is often the case on a low end computer you might have better luck with a faster computer lots of RAM and updated graphics card and driver Embedded VRML in the web page is not updated When generating a visualization the embedded file is sometimes not updated and you will see an old file 21 Solution Use the link on the top of the page to open the file in the standalone VRML viewer This bug is probably related to the Octaga Browser plugin it does not help to force reload or deleting Browser Cache If you restart your web browser the embedded file is updated Some links inside the VRML world do not work when using Cortona 3D viewer All links point to the same viewpoint This is probably because anchors in the VRML file can have the same name TouchSensor is misplaced in VRML Player on Mac OSX When an object is linked with a touch sensor one must click underneath the object to activate the sensor rather than clicking the actual object Empty fields from the database in the CGI When trying to visualize a field that has no values at all from the database the
9. L The Virtual Reality Modelling Language VRML is used to define three dimensional scenes which allows a user to move around within its environment VRML programs are event driven like HTML and are commonly used to embed 3D effects on a web page 1 5 MySQL The Structured Query Language SQL is a language that provides an interface to a database MySQL is an open source software relational database management system which is used to handle queries and transactions to a database 1 6 Apache Apache is a web server which can be configured to run Perl CGI 1 7 Profile files The profiles are the XML files used by LCFG These files can be arranged in a folder as a snapshot from a specific date creating a data set which can be imported by LCFGVisualizer Chapter 2 Overview LCFG visualizer is a program which is aimed at LCFG administrators allowing them to import and visualize parts of XML files Profiles The program is divided into two separate parts datalmporter and dataVisualizer see figure 4 6 datalmporter This is the part of the program that is used to parse the XML profiles extract the wanted information and export it to a MySQL database dataVisualizer This part of the program connects to the database and generates a visualization based on the criteria and techniques chosen by the user It is built as a Perl CGI application designed to run on an AMP server 2 1 System Requirement Specification This sect
10. LCFGVisualizer User Manual Lars Martin Bredal Morten Byhring Tom Erik Iversen Oslo University College Faculty of Engineering May 23rd 2008 Foreword This document is part of a bachelor project developed at Oslo University College department for engineering spring 2008 The user manual for LCFGVisualizer will describe the product and how to use and install it This document is written mainly for the project assigner our local school mentor and the external examiner evaluating the project Even though this document tries to explain the system in a simple manner some basic knowledge about the field of informatics is required in order to fully understand the contents Contents 1 Technologies LA BEA an a daa e oss LA Dato Karata See he ride pela BS ew BK kac HEM A RNE EA A A II a rave Eor MYSQL sabs ee eee ete adi o Gene o E ee os 1 6 APAGO a Bee i E e in IA A a m age g a ke Se ht nite os 2 Overview 2 1 System Requirement Specification 2 1 1 Hardware requirements 2 1 2 Software requirements 3 User guide 3 1 Installing LCFGVisualizer 200 A A Bad 3 2 Importing XML datado ED goa mitia iimport ao rr lace zra a p e aaa 3 2 2 Appending newer data sets G3 The config file Vedat o o ott 3 4 Generating visualizations 24 2 a ok ee ee eS 3 5 The visualizations be a i i te i Boa 3 5 1 The HUD Wem sm a oyna GS ae bia et ise 3 3 5 2 Visualiza
11. alization Y SpiralYisualization Class Class TZ node Visualization pyramidvisaulization Class Class cgifunctions E Class ER YES PyramidWisualizer Node Visualizer Class Class gt GroupYisualizer Class SpiralVisualizer y Class VRML_Generator Y Class Class wesd cfg Database Figure 4 7 Structure 21 List of Figures 3 1 3 2 3 3 3 4 4 1 4 2 4 3 4 4 4 5 4 6 4 7 Start pages A A A BOA o A A 2 Select components 2 lt 0 doe gud ae sara a odi a Select vales e de eo mn pre a Select components dale Se Es las Se Be SS ee opt dd ds Pyramid Visualization based on nodes with fc6 and owner INIOIMAHCS cu ie glam Oe ee a in Sod Be Oo oh enh ss Be Group Visualization based on OS and gateway Node Visualization showing different values Node Visualization with both common and different values Spiral Visualization based on managers BVSLCIMMOVERVIEW opa ia et a Re bk al Se SITU LUTE lt a AAA E G 28
12. eO inva amp criterial os amp table1 network crite D Visualization between groups Criterias 1 inv gt os 2 network gt gateway 3 inv gt owner gt informatics 4 Hide Move m Start animation Toggle criteria3 OsX Leopard fc6 sl5 fc5 solaris9 fc6_64 unknown fc3 sl5_64 Figure 3 4 Select components 3 5 The visualizations All the visualizations are VRML code which follows the VRML97 specifica tions and are generated on the fly based upon the criteria given by the end 16 user The generated code has been tested and found to be working in Octaga Player You can navigate inside the VRML worlds by using either the arrow buttons on your keyboard or left clicking the mouse and moving it For more information about navigation in Octaga Player refer to the Octaga Player usermanual Most of the techniques require the user to select one or more criteria from which the system generates clusters or groups 3 5 1 The HUD Menu The different visualizations all generate a HUD Heads Up Display menu with some common elements The top bar of the menu consists of two elements A hide field and a move field The menu can be hidden by clicking on the hide field Whilst hidden another click will cause the menu to expand again The menu can be moved into a different position by clicking and holding the move field and dragging it to the desired position drag and drop The actual menu content may vary d
13. epending on the visualization technique chosen 3 5 2 Visualization between groups Criteria needed Two or three This visualization consists of all the individual nodes in the network along with spheres representing the different groups derived from the second criteria see figure 4 2 Every computer is shown as a cube where the colour of the cube specifies its current value in the first criteria When the user clicks Start animation on the HUD menu the nodes will move to its belonging sphere group If used the third criteria is a boolean true false value and the nodes fulfilling this criteria will be rotated around their own axis To inspect a group click the sphere and the viewpoint will zoom in to allow a closer look Another click on the sphere will reset the viewpoint To filter different groups click the HUD menu items you want to toggle One click hides all the nodes in this group and another one unhides To inspect a single node place the cursor over a node The HUD menu will expand and reveal information about the selected node Notice The node information displayed can be changed in the config file cfg vscd cfg section preferredfields 4http www octaga com freedownloads OctagaP layer current User 20Manual pdf 17 3 5 3 Pyramid Visualization Criteria needed Two The pyramid visualization see figure 4 1 shows clusters as an hierarchial pyramid structure with maximum three steps The first layer
14. g on the amount of changes the sphere colour is dark blue no changes lighter blue green yellow red and purple many changes The HUD menu will show a calendar to track when the size and colours change and the animation can be stopped and started again by pressing the play stop buttons 18 Chapter 4 System reference This part of the document contains documentation needed by developers for maintenance and expansion of the system A more detailed System Reference is given in the LCFGVisualizers Complete Product Documentation and is currently only available in Norwegian Documentation about specific methods and modules can be found in the program s source code which is commented in English 4 1 DataVisualizer The dataVisualizer is built as a three layer program divided into GUI Graphical User Interface BLL Business Layer Logic and DAL Data Access Layer For an illustration see figure 4 7 in section 4 3 4 1 1 GUI The GUI consists of the following files and classes cgiFunctions pm Methods for printing HTML elements such as forms stylesheets menu javascripts and embed visualizations Dependencies DAL pm cgi scripts e Index cgi Start page e nodevisualization cgi e pyramidvisualization cgi 19 e groupvisualization cgi e spiralvisualization cgi Dependencies CGI 4 1 2 BLL The business layer Visualization Library Consists of a library of visualization modules namely e GroupVisualizer e
15. ion describes what is needed to run LCFGVisualizer 2 1 1 Hardware requirements To run LCFGVisualizer we recommend e Memory 1 GB e Hard drive 50 MB for installation and roughly 1 GB free temporary space The client used to view the visualizations this could also be the same computer that runs the service also needs a 3D accelerated graphics card with a minimum of 32 MB RAM although we recommend a lot more 6 2 1 2 Software requirements The server e Perl gt 5 10 with XML LibXML 1 65 LibXML requires the following packages e XML LibXML Common general functions used by various XML LibXML modules e XML SAX DOM building support from SAX e XML NamespaceSupport DOM building support from SAX XML LibXML also depends on Gnome libXML2 so this needs to be installed in prior For further details about libXML please refer to cpan 4 e MySQL gt 5 0 45 e Apache webserver with CGI modules enabled For details about Apache and CGI refer to apache org The client e A modern web browser Tested on Internet Explorer 6 7 Mozilla Firefox e A VRML viewer Octaga Player gt 2 2 3 http search cpan org dist XML LibXML 1 65 http httpd apache org docs 2 2 howto cgi html 3www octaga com Currently this version is only available for Windows and Mac OS X You can use version 2 1 for Linux but some functionality will not be available or buggy See the bugs and issue section 4 2 for further info
16. isualization based on Operating System gateway and emphasize the nodes with owner field set to Informatics Fil Rediger Vis Historikk Bokmerker Verkt y Hjelp lt a gt y e Gh LJ http filocalhost cgi binfgroupYisualization cgi nrOfCrits 38table0 inv amp table1 network amp table inv amp Subn y gt Visualization between groups Table ne Choose criteria Ct criteria Submit fields Figure 3 3 Select values Click the submit button to start generating the visualization Notice In some rare cases where imported fields don t have any values set in the XML files the select boxes are empty If an empty value is selected an error message will be produced in which case you must go back and select a different value or table 15 The visualization will be embedded in the browser window You could also click the fullscreen link to open the file in the standalone Octaga Player To choose different fields or visualizations use the menu links on top of the page Notice On some systems after generating several different visualizations the embedded VRML file will not be updated We believe this is a browser problem A work around is to either close the browser completely and restart it or opening the files in fullscreen mode with the link on the top of the page Mozilla Firefox i Fil Rediger is Historikk Bokmerker Verkt y Hjelp lt a v y e a LJ http localhost cgi bin groupVisualization cgi nrOFCrits 3 amp tabl
17. o import It is wise but not necessary to keep all the components that were used in an initial import If you add further components that were not initally imported the initial values will be set to unknown Also be aware of the following If you try to import a data set which is older than the newest that is imported wou will most likely end up with redundant data So make sure you import all data sets in the correct order going from oldest to most recent 3 3 The config file vcsd cfg The config file can be edited with any editor Lines beginning with a is ignored Consists of the following parts Databaselnfo Set the connection info to fit your mysql server PathToFiles This path should reflect the path to the data set you want to import for instance xmlpath home user xml profiles 2008 03 05 Namespace Used by libXML to parse the data files Default value is namespace http www lcfg org namespace profile 1 0 Component This is the section where you specify what fields to import into the database The format is compl inv os 10 PreferredFields This section specifies what imported fields to use as a machine description in some visualization techniques Choose a set of values from the components section you have already configured CGISpecific Contains one value the path to output folder in the www server root This is where the generated files are saved and viewed from A sample configuration file cfg vcsd
18. select box in the web page is empty and it is impossible to draw a VRML file Solution Go back a few steps in the web page and select another table Octaga Player for Linux can not show text nodes No text is shown in the Visualization This bug is caused by Octaga Player being unable to find the system fonts We have reported the bug to Octaga and they have confirmed this to be an issue in version 2 1 22 4 3 Appendix 4 3 1 Figures 4 Hide Start animation Switch view 751 nodes fullfilling both criteria 805 nodes fullfilling first criteria 1055 nodes total Figure 4 1 Pyramid Visualization based on nodes with fc6 and owner informatics 23 4 Hide Move Start animation Toggle criteria3 OsX Leopard E fc6 sl5 E fc5 E solaris9 fc6_64 unknown m fc3 si5_64 12 Figure 4 2 Group Visualization based on OS and gateway maplist_record xinetd RT profile components cyrussasl Figure 4 3 Node Visualization showing different values 24 maplist_record Nodeinformation network gateway 129 215 59 254 Belongs to ain profile network components Figure 4 4 Node Visualization with both common and different values Figure 4 5 Spiral Visualization based on managers 25 o cdas DataVisualizer Datalmporter XML_to_DB E _to_ GUI i Class cgi scripts Visualization engine S Figure 4 6 System overview 26 group Visu
19. tion between groups 3 5 3 Pyramid Visualization wed ec ete eed ae e 3 5 4 Node visualizer amp es iS Budd OP M ra ra rr de 4 System reference AN Data ViSualiZer lt 2 E A A a Akik AAA A Dil whim ea A Tash Meme dh p BA BOG ie Mh Se a ce POE a INA 20 4 1 3 VRML_Generator 2 202 24 6008 208 a eee ee a eS 20 AA IA i ane ne SR es ith ee E n 21 Bugs amp known issues 5 e en ea len oe e Skee Eo He 21 Appendix ut Rahn Sy Ren ace Aen a 23 Aal Figures O aar i Ben eis Wea A 23 Chapter 1 Technologies This section will describe the technologies this program depends on 1 1 Perl Perl is dynamic programming language originally developed for fast text manipulation It has been influenced by languages like C AWK and Lisp and is nowadays used for a wide range of tasks such as network programming Graphical User interfaces GUI and web programming etc 1 2 CGI The Common Gateway Interface CGI is a standard for interfacing external applications with an information server e g HTTP servers A CGI program is exectuted in real time providing the ability to display dynamic information Perl has CGI as a built in module and can use it to dynamically create web pages 13 HTML The HyperText Markup Language HTML is used when publishing documents on the world wide web and consists of a set of codes that are interpreted by a web browser in order to present text images and other media to a user 1 4 VRM
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