Table of Contents
The display program must be able to save its entire state, then later restore from that state in a separate session.
Save a particular plot configuration as a template which can later be applied to create similar plots. This implies saving the set of variable names in the plot, then when applying those variable names to a different plot resolving them with a different datasource than the original.
Configuration components need names by which they can be browsed and distinguished. They don't necessarily need names when storing the entire state of the display, since the restoration process can simply move through the list of saved members restoring each one individually, without regard for its name. However, then it is not easy to distinguish between them in a list. For example, when saving several individual plot configurations, each configuration needs some kind of identifying name and description. See the section called “Saving a Single Plot Configuration”.
There needs to be a configuration library. A configuration library is a set of configuration sources, where a source may be a single local XML file, or the database, or whatever. A configuration browser can browse multiple sources at once, invoking new plots from existing configurations. See the section called “Saving a Single Plot Configuration”.