4 projects were accepted into the 2007 Google Summer of Code
Pseudo 3-D Charting
The dojo javascript toolkit currently enables vector graphic representations in 2D. The proposed development entails extending the capability to support 3D pseudo rendering with an application for charting. This additional support will not only provide a better mechanism to display and interpret information, but will also enhance the audience experience.
Overdrive is a datastore that can be used to access semi-structured data stored on a MySQL database via PHP. It will be using the underlying AJAX communication that is supported by the dojo APIs.
I looked through the existing dojo.data code and decided upon the architecture of overdrive. Overdrive will provide the functionlaity that is already offered by dojo.data API such as basic read write operations. In addition it will provide functions to overdrive specific functionality.
My initial implementation will be an API that will provide read-only functionality and will support only text strings. As development progresses I plan to provide support for additional data types which are supported by dojo. Then dojo.data.core.Identity functionality will be integrated with overdrive. Final implementation of the project will have both read and write operations.
One primary concern is how to represent semi-structured data in a relational database. For the moment I'm planning to use the scheme proposed by Brian Skinner in http://dojo.jot.com/WikiHome/SummerOfCode2007DojoDataProjects - i.e. Item, Attribute and Value scheme. Thus for each item stored in the database, each attribute and its corresponding value is stored in several rows of the database allocating one row for each attribute.
dojox.gfx is a 2D vector graphics library developed since last summer, this library has stirred some buzz in the community. dojox.gfx3d goes further, a 3D vector library. Sure, we are not trying to compete with Pixar or Quake, this library aims to provide the interface for users to manipulate vector graphic in 3D view port, and we hope chart developers would like to have a test drive to build some pseudo 3D presentations.
Here is a series of blogs to document our efforts, and one all-in-one document is maintained here, above all, the snapshot of the source code and SVN access(available soon).