It is not generally necessary for users to understand the details of each object class, but a rough idea of what the classes are and do will often be helpful. The main classes of Graphite objects are shown in the class diagram , using the same notation as in Design Patterns . Detailed understanding of the diagram is not necessary for this discussion, but for the sake of completeness, a brief description of the notation is as follows. Classes are shown as boxes, with the name of the class in bold type. Important data members and functions are shown in the lower part of a box.
Arrows connecting boxes indicate relationships between the classes.
A brief description of each class follows. A set of common predefined graphs will be included i with the standard Graphite distribution. One should note three separate coordinate systems used by Graphite. There are data coordinates , i.e., the space occupied by the raw i data. These distinctions are important because some positions are specified in data coordinates, while others are specified in view or device coordinates.