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Creating Interactive Constellation Diagrams

Enhancing Presentations for the Constellation Applet

The Constellation Applet displays interactive node/link diagrams. These diagrams can show relationships between nodes and links. The Constellation Applet displays affinity, sequence, and ring diagrams that are generated out of arc, associative, or hierarchical data sets. The Constellation Applet provides a number of interactive features by default, as described in Creating Constellation Diagrams.

Enhancements to Constellation Applet presentations are configured in your SAS/GRAPH program by specifying arguments in the DS2CONST macro. The following table lists some of the available enhancements and the DS2CONST arguments that implement them. These enhancements enable you to provide data tips and drill-down URLs for nodes and links, and to increase the visible distinctions between the data values that are associated with the nodes and links.

Constellation Applet Enhancements
Enhancements DS2CONST Arguments
Specify link weights and configure a scroll bar that controls the display of links based on weight. LVALUE, MINLNKWT, SCLNKWT
Lay out the diagram automatically or as specified in a data set. LAYOUT
Specify a stylesheet to format the HTML output file. BDCLASS, SEPCLASS, SPCLASS, SSFILE, SSHREF

See Arguments for Stylesheets.

Add pop-up data tips to nodes and links. LTIP, NTIP
Define drill-down URLs for nodes and links. LURL, NURL
Specify menu option text for a drill-down action. ACTION, NACTION
Specify a browser window or frame that displays drill-down URLs. DRILTARG
Add a background color, image, or drill-down URL. IBACKLOC, IBACKPOS, IBACKURL,
Specify text colors, fonts, styles, and sizes. NFNTNAME, NSFNTNAM, CTEXT, CATEXT

See DS2TREE and DS2CONST Arguments for Diagram Appearance.

Specify colors for nodes and links. NCOLVAL, NCOLOR, CNODE, LCOLVAL, LCOLOR, CLINK
Specify dashed link lines. LSTIP and LSTIPFAC

Note that a number of enhancements apply only to associative data sets when you specify the macro argument DATATYPE=ASSOC. The macro argument definitions identify which features apply only to associative data.

The DS2CONST macro requires you to specify node and link data sets. As an enhancement, you can define a node styles data set that contains style information only. You can use the node styles data set to standardize the appearance of a series of diagrams, among other uses.

Reference information on the arguments of the DS2CONST macro is provided in DS2CONST Macro Arguments.

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