The oddly named yFiles library for Silverlight is a new product from the similarly named yWorks that is worth looking at if you have a need for sophisticated and, as far as possible, automatic diagramming. The important point is that this is not just a statistics charting package but something that can create fairly complex network diagrams. It has algorithms for client-side automatic diagram layout and graph analysis. It also comes with a viewer component for visualizing and editing diagrams.

yFiles attempts to find good automatic layouts of diagrams that, in the samples at least, look very complex including large UML diagrams, flowcharts, business process diagrams, organization charts, family trees, biological pathways, social networks, and so on. It is also claimed that the component is fast enough to deal with very large diagrams. It also includes graph and network analysis algorithms such as shortest path detection and connectivity analysis which are used to analyse the features that are relevant to the layout problem.

The best way to see the range and sophistication level of the diagrams that yFiles tackles is to have a look at the samples in the web gallery. For a demonstration visit:http://www.yworks.com/products/yfilessilverlight and a 30 day evaluation is also available for download. Pricing starts at $4,900.

yFiles works with Silverlight 3 and later and can be used with Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 and Express Web Developer 2008. There are also versions of yFiles for Java, .NET (WPF), Flash and Javascript (Ajax).

More information from: http://www.yworks.com/

<ASIN:0672330628>

<ASIN:1430223812>

<ASIN:0470524650>

<ASIN:1430229799>