LiveGraph

LiveGraph is a project consisting of a real-time graph plotter.

While your application is computing and logging results to a CSV file using the LiveGraph Writer API, the plotter lets you visualise and monitor the results live - by instantly plotting charts and graphs of the data.

LiveGraph was developed in the academic domain and is being used for research on daily basis. Being open source, LiveGraph is absolutely free.

What's inside?

LiveGraph consists of 3 major components.

First, there is a data file definition for transferable data log files. The file format is closely based on the comma separated values (CSV) text file format. LiveGraph defines a few small but important extensions, such as data column header definitions and file description annotations.

Second, there is a Java writer / logger API which provides application developers with a fast and easy way for writing data generated by an application into LiveGraph CSV files. The simplicity of the file format makes it straight forward for developers who use other programming languages than Java to create appropriate data files using their own routines. We are hoping that the open source community will contribute to the project by providing implementations of the writer API in other languages.

Finally, there is the LiveGraph plotter application. The plotter reads the LiveGraph data file (or any other CSV file) and plots the data series contained therein on the screen. The special feature that distinguishes LiveGraph from all the other data plotters is that LiveGraph can automatically re-examine the data file at short intervals and update the graphs of the screen. By using specialized caching techniques LiveGraph uses only very few computational resources for the updates, even if the data file grows very large and fast.

All this allows you to visualize the results of your application instantly and while it is still running. You don't have to worry about implementing any data visualization algorithms, instead you can concentrate on your actual task. As a useful by-product you are left with a complete data log, which you can delete later, if you do not need it.

You can find some additional information about LiveGraph's special features in the section "Why LiveGraph?". There, we explain in more detail, for which tasks there are better tools, and for which tasks LiveGraph might be the best tool currently around. In the user manual we describe the functions of LiveGraph application from the point of view of a desktop user. The developer manual provides all details you need to start using LiveGraph with your applications.