• Illustration: Visio Pivot Diagram

Data-driven diagramming and user interface improvements are planned for Visio 12, the next version of Microsoft's software for drawing business and technical diagrams. Currently in closed beta with release likely in late 2006, Visio 12 could broaden Visio's audience to users who analyze or visualize corporate data. However, Microsoft is counting on software vendors and systems integrators to integrate Visio with other products that make effective use of Visio's new features and to support specialized design tasks.

Data-Driven Diagrams for Analysis, Updating

Visio 12 delivers new features for generating diagrams from data. Specifically, the new version can create shapes from an external data source, which can reside in Excel, a SharePoint Portal Server list, or an ODBC-compliant database manager such as SQL Server. Once a diagram is generated, Visio 12 can periodically synchronize it with the data table, creating and deleting shapes to reflect the current data. Potentially, the feature can simplify keeping a diagram such as an office plan or parts list up to date by eliminating manual data reentry and redrawing. The feature works with any type of diagram; Visio 2003, in contrast, can generate only specific types of diagrams (such as organization charts and network diagrams) from external data.

There are some important limitations to the new feature. Synchronization is one-way: changes made to the data affect the corresponding diagram, but not vice-versa. Also, the feature generates only shapes, not connections. For example, Visio 12 could generate a set of shapes that represent products and components in a catalog database, but could not automatically draw a hierarchy showing which products contain which components.

Visio 12 can also superimpose external data on diagrams using new data graphing capabilities. For example, it can color shapes or add icons to shapes based on values in a data table. This would enable (for example) an automatically updated organization chart that color-codes business units by profitability, or a parts breakdown diagram of a product that flags parts running low in inventory. This feature could prove useful as an adjunct to charts for analyzing corporate data.

Visio 12 adds specific support for charting data from multidimensional data sources, such as SQL Server Analysis Services Cubes, with a new diagram type called a Pivot Diagram. (See the illustration "Visio Pivot Diagram".)

Usability, Sharing Improvements

Several small user interface improvements could make Visio 12 more approachable for first-time or occasional users. Most noticeable is a new AutoConnect feature that can automatically lay out and connect shapes as a user drags them onto a diagram, reducing the amount of time users have to spend lining up shapes and drawing connectors. Visio 12 templates also support themes—coordinated sets of shape styles and colors—which will help users (most of whom are not graphics professionals) create cleaner-looking diagrams with less effort. However, Visio 12 does not have the new Office 12 user interface, designed to make advanced features easier to find for less-expert users.

To make drawings more accessible to users who don't have Visio, a Visio 12 previewer will be built into the Internet Explorer (IE) 7 browser and the Office 12 suite, enabling users to view and print (but not modify) Visio diagrams that they receive in e-mail or find on the Web, even if they don't own the product. While Visio has had a free previewer for some time, this will be the first version of the previewer redistributed with widely used products like IE and Office.

Visio 12, like several other Office 12 applications, also supports output to Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF, used by the free Acrobat Reader), and to the XML Paper Specification (XPS) format planned for Windows Vista. Both formats enable high-quality, device-independent views of diagrams for users who lack Visio and its viewer. However, unlike Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 12, Visio 12 will save by default to a binary format, not XML; the Visio XML drawing format continues to be supported as an option.

Specialized Diagrams Left to Partners

Visio 12 updates the look of existing diagram templates but adds relatively few new diagram templates or support for specialized computer-aided design (CAD) tasks, such as computer network or chemical process design. Apart from Pivot Diagrams, Visio 12 adds Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) process diagrams (which support diagramming of IT processes in the format recommended by the ITIL) and value stream maps (a method of diagramming business processes particularly associated with Toyota's Lean Manufacturing method).

Fewer new diagram templates reflect the current focus of the Visio team. According to General Manager Richard Wolf, that team is now devoting most of its time to horizontal features that cut across industries and design tasks, and counting on other software vendors, solution providers, and systems integrators to add features for specific design tasks. All of the new Visio 12 features have APIs for developers to extend the product, and the data-driven diagramming features will particularly interest developers looking to add industry- or diagram-specific analysis features.

However, Visio 12 APIs are based on the aging COM technology and rely on Primary Interoperability Assemblies (PIAs) to support VB.NET, C#, and other .NET languages that don't use COM directly. COM and its toolset are no longer being actively maintained by Microsoft, and the COM APIs might not be maintained in future versions of Visio. Unlike Word and Excel 12, Visio is not gaining higher-level APIs to simplify programming in .NET languages and insulate application code from the COM APIs. Additionally, Visio is not supported by the Visual Studio Tools for Office, which integrates Word and Excel into the Visual Studio environment to simplify error-checking and debugging. Consequently, Visio developers face a less-capable development environment and will be investing in COM APIs whose lifetime is uncertain. Developers will have to balance this prospect against the head start that the Visio engine can provide when writing diagram-oriented solutions.

The Visio Web site is www.microsoft.com/visio.

A blog that previews new Visio features is at blogs.msdn.com/eric_rockey.