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#!N  #!Rall270 External Asynchronous Data Sources #!N #!EC #!N #!N Many 
applications of visualization tools call for a direct interface to external 
data sources, especially ones that generate data to be studied (e.g. 
a computational simulation). The execution model of Data Explorer provides the 
framework for real-time visualization of data generated asynchronously by such a 
process. An external data source is linked into a Data Explorer 
network by incorporating a communications module, which receives data from the 
external source, often across a socket, and passes the resulting data 
object to the module's output. This module (and its descendents) will 
only run when the external data source has indicated that new 
data are available (see  #!Lasynmod,dxall1048 h Asynchronous Modules  #!EL  in IBM Visualization Data Explorer Programmer's 
Reference). #!N #!N Data Explorer also provides a mechanism for direct 
manipulation of the executive (e.g., mode, passing data, error handling, etc.) 
and the user interface (e.g., window visibility and mode) from an 
external application. This allows control of Data Explorer from other software 
and peer-to-peer communications (see  #!Ldxlink,dxall1141 h DXLink Developer's Toolkit  #!EL  in IBM Visualization Data Explorer Programmer's 
Reference). #!N #!N #!N  #!F-adobe-times-medium-i-normal--18*   Next Topic #!EF #!N #!N  #!Lall271,dxall272 h Parallelism using Distributed Processing  #!EL  
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