Executive summary: What kinds of sound architecture choices are there for displaying thread-safe, dynamic data in real time using Swing?
Details: I have recently completed writing a multi-threaded, automated trading platform in Java. I say "platform" because I have made it very easy to implement new and multiple trading programs by sub-classing virtual objects. I have encapsulated the trading code so I can use it in a Swing application, console application, or whatever. Currently I am running it with a Swing front-end.
I would say I am a Swing abuser rather than user. Not on purpose. It takes a special kind of thinking to develop a modern GUI and integrate it with dynamic data that I have yet to learn. I know the very basics, such as updating the screen only in the event dispatch thread. Here is how I display messages (from my SingleFrameApplication subclass):
private class PrintTraderMsgTask extends SwingWorker<Void, String>{
@Override
protected Void doInBackground() {
String msg;
while(!isCancelled()){
msg = m_data.m_TraderMsgs.poll();
if(msg!=null){
publish(msg);
}
}
return null;
}
@Override
protected void process(List<String> chunks) {
for (String item: chunks){
m_view.displayTraderString(item);
}
}
}
The data element here is just
public ArrayBlockingQueue<String> m_TraderMsgs;
which any number of "Traders" (separate threads) might be sticking messages in at any time. The other type of data object I've used is a ConcurrentHashMap. I collect order logs, trade records, prices, and other sorts of data in these. So the picture I am trying to paint here is a large collection of time-dependent data, too much to display all at once.
What I would really like to do is display summary information and have the ability to drill down. Right now I am displaying messages in JTextAreas and other info in some JTextFields. I can read up on JCoolWhatever and stuff data in there. But before I start down that road I want to learn about other architecture choices.
Method 1: Use SwingWorkers to grab data and stick it in JWhatever which resides in my FrameView subclass.
Method 2: ???
...
We want:
(1) reasonable modularity.. enough to add/remove elements without ruining our evening
(2) interaction capability, specifically drill-down capability since there is so much data
Thanks... the real-time display of a complex set of dynamic data is an interesting subject and I hope we can get a good discussion going.
