Let's say you have an application that builds mining models on the fly for your business users. How do you quickly generate a visualization that they can easily share as a interactive web page? No worries - the Visio Add-in from the SQL Server 2005 DM Add-ins for Office 2007 package has a programmability component that will let you accomplish this with a dozen or so lines of C# code.

The component connects to an Analysis Services instance, starts the Visio application in silent mode, uses the Visio engine in conjunction with the Add-in to render the data mining diagram in Visio and finally takes advantage of the Save as Web feature in Visio to convert the drawing to a interactive HTML web page.

The Visio Add-in supports the following visualizations:

Setting up the C# Project

Here's what you need to do before jumping into the actual code:

1. Install Visio 2007 and the Visio component of the SQL Server 2005 DM Add-ins for Office 2007 on your machine.

2. Since the required add-in assemblies are in the GAC, you have to copy them to a local folder before you can add the programmability component as a project reference. The steps below show how to locate and copy the files from the GAC:

   1. Open a command prompt and navigate to the folder %windir%\assembly\GAC_MSIL.
   2. Locate the file Microsoft.SqlServer.DataMining.Office.Visio.Programability.dll (dir /s Microsoft.SqlServer.DataMining.Office.Visio.Programability.dll).
   3. Copy the file to a folder on your machine.
   4. Locate the file Microsoft.SqlServer.DataMining.Office.Visio.dll (dir /s Microsoft.SqlServer.DataMining.Office.Visio.dll).
   5. Copy the file to a folder on your machine.

    

3. In the C# project in Visual Studio, add an assembly reference to the Visio Interop library under COM -> “Microsoft Visio 12.0 Type Library” and “Microsoft Visio 12.0 Save As Web Type Library”.

4. Add a reference to the add-in assembly Microsoft.SqlServer.DataMining.Office.Visio.Programability.dll copied in step #2.

And Finally, the Code

 

The following code snippet shows you how to generate an HTML visualization for a decision tree model built using the AdventureWorks dataset.

An example of the output from this can be found here.

 

using System;

using System.Collections.Generic;

using System.Text;

using System.IO;

using Microsoft.SqlServer.DataMining.Office.Visio.Programability;

 

namespace DMDigramUsingViso

{

    class Program

    {

        //This is the folder where the data mining addins have been installed.

        public const string DMAddinInstallPath = @"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server 2005 DM Add-Ins";

 

        //This is the name of the Visio template file for the data mining addins.

        public const string VisioTemplateName = @"Microsoft Data Mining.vst";

 

        //This is the name of the target HTML file.

        public const string WebFileName = @"TargetMail.htm";

 

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            try

            {

                string visioFile = DMAddinInstallPath + "\\" + VisioTemplateName;

                string webFile = System.IO.Directory.GetCurrentDirectory() + "\\" + WebFileName;

                Console.WriteLine("DM Addin install path : {0}", DMAddinInstallPath);

                Console.WriteLine("Visio Template : {0}", VisioTemplateName);

                Console.WriteLine("Output : {0}", webFile);

 

                //----------------------------------------------------

                // Create the parameter object for the decision tree

                // drawing and populate the required parameters

                //----------------------------------------------------

                ParameterDecisionTree parameter = new ParameterDecisionTree();

                //Friendly name for the connection

                parameter.ConnectionName = "AdventureWorksConnection";

                //Name of the Analysis Server

                parameter.DataSourceName = "localhost";

                //Name of database

                parameter.CatalogName = "AdventureWorks";

                //Name of the mining model

                parameter.ModelName = "Target Mail";

                //Name of the decision tree predictable

                parameter.TreeName = "Bike Buyer";

                //Flag to hide the progress dialog

                parameter.Silent = true;                               

 

                //----------------------------------------------------

                // Optional properties for the parameter object

                //----------------------------------------------------

                //Shade tree nodes using support

                parameter.GradientType = GradientType.SupportGradient;

                //Show support in the nodes

                parameter.ShowSupport = false;

                //Fill color for the nodes               

                parameter.FillColorArgb = System.Drawing.Color.Aqua.ToArgb();

                //Fill pattern color for the nodes

                parameter.PatternColorArgb = System.Drawing.Color.Azure.ToArgb();  

 

                //----------------------------------------------------

                // Drawing helper object which performs the actual rendering

                //----------------------------------------------------

                DMDrawingHelper helper = new DMDrawingHelper(visioFile, false);

                //Start the Visio application

                helper.Start();

 

                /*

                  Helper object allows access to Visio object model using the following methods:

                    helper.CreateNewDocument();

                    helper.CreateNewPage();

                    helper.ActiveDocument;

                    helper.ActivePage;

                    helper.Application;

                 */

               

                //Render the decision tree on the current active page

                Console.WriteLine("Rendering decision tree using the visio engine...");

                helper.DrawDecisionTree(helper.ActivePage, parameter);

 

                //Convert all the pages of the drawing to HTML

                Console.WriteLine("Converting to HTML using the visio engine...");

                helper.SaveDocumentAsWebPage(helper.ActiveDocument,

                    -1,

                    -1,

                    webFile,

                    DMDrawingHelper.ShowNavigationBar | DMDrawingHelper.ShowPanAndZoom | DMDrawingHelper.ShowPropertiesWindow | DMDrawingHelper.ShowSearchTool);

 

                //Close the Visio App

                helper.Close();

                Console.WriteLine("HTML File is generated at : {0}", webFile);

 

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                Console.WriteLine("DMDigramUsingViso Error : {0}", ex.Message);

            }

        }

    }

}