Welcome to EspressDashboard (hereafter referred to as EDAB). EDAB is a powerful, server-based information presentation and delivery system. EDAB provides a fully secure environment where users can create and deploy feature rich dashboards.
With EDAB, users can easily draw data from a variety of sources and create a wide range of charts, reports, and maps using the integrated Chart Designer, QuickDesigner, and Map Builder. The Organizer interface provides a virtual file management and permission system for all reports, charts, maps, and dashboards.
There are two visual design interfaces for creating charts, namely the applet based Chart Designer and the zero-client QuickDesigner. Reports can be created and edited with the QuickDesigner only. Chart Designer is a full-featured chart creation and editing tool that empowers the user with complete control of the chart type and features in editing the chart, while the QuickDesigner provides a subset of the chart features and aims at zero learning curve and quick turn around time. Since reports in dashboards are typically quite simple in nature, QuickDesigner is the only interface for designing reports.
Deployment features allow users to automatically publish dashboards through the integrated menu features, and by generating URL requests.
EDAB is composed of 8 main components:
- EDAB Server:
The server is the back-end to EDAB. It deploys as a servlet collection within an application server or servlet container, and manages design and deployment for dashboards. The server handles user authentication and provides the data access and file I/O for clients running the Chart Designer and QuickDesigner components.
- Organizer:
The Organizer is a powerful graphical user interface that acts as a virtual file management system. It allows users to organize charts, reports, maps, and dashboards in virtual folders, generate URLs deploying dashboards, and set file-level privileges. It also provides users with an interface for managing data sources, and designing database queries.
- Chart Designer:
The Chart Designer is a graphical user interface, launched within the Organizer that allows users to design and customize full featured charts. Its point and click interface enables the swift and easy creation of charts with an almost infinite degree of flexibility.
- QuickDesigner Reports:
The QuickDesigner Reports is a thin-client ad-hoc reporting tool. It allows users to quickly design data view queries, to use existing data sources, and build reports. Limited formatting options allow users to customize reports and save them back to the Organizer.
- QuickDesigner Charts:
The QuickDesigner Charts is a thin-client ad-hoc reporting tool. It allows users to quickly design data view queries, to use existing data sources, and build charts. Limited formatting options allow users to customize charts and save them back to the Organizer.
- Online Maps:
Online Maps is a thin-client tool that allows users to create online maps using OpenStreetMap or Google© maps. The easy to use interface allows users to create elegant maps with parameters, titles, legends, and drilldowns. For Online Maps maps, reports and charts can be directly embedded into the tooltips.
- Dashboard Builder:
The Dashboard Builder is a thin-client tool that allows users to create custom dashboard presentations. The simple interface allows users to select charts, define parameters and drill-down using elements deployed in the Organizer.
- Chart Viewer:
The Chart Viewer is a Java Web Start Application allows charts to be viewed remotely. It enables viewers to rotate, resize, zoom and pan a chart. Viewers can click on individual data points to either recover the data associated with the data point, or link to another chart.
- EDAB API:
The EDAB API is a Java application programming interface that allows users to interface programmatically with the EDAB Server and Organizer. Users can get a handle to the Organizer to retrieve information about files and permissions.
The following diagram illustrates the basic architecture of an EDAB implementation/installation:
EDAB Architecture Diagram
The EDAB server deploys as a servlet collection within an application server/servlet & JSP container. Other servlets/JSPs can be deployed in the server to connect to, and retrieve information from the EDAB server (like file names, schedule information, and schedule reports/charts).
On the back end, information for EDAB including user/group information, the Organizer structure and files, and security and privilege information are saved in a database. The server also performs data access and buffering for reports and charts, and file I/O on the server-side.
Clients can be administrators modifying users, privileges, and server settings from the remote Admin Console, or the Organizer. Clients can load the Chart Designer through the Organizer to create full featured charts, or load the thin-client QuickDesigners for creating basic reports and charts. Clients viewing dashboards can access the menu page and make dashboard URL calls to the EDAB server.