Manipulation and management of links and nodes in large graphs

摘要

Scalable architecture for managing and rendering a large graph containing a large number of nodes and edges. The user can group arbitrary nodes to encapsulate complexity without losing any of the cross-group edges dependencies. All edges of the nodes contained in the group are rolled up into roll-up links (or “arteries”) where the graphical thickness indicates relatively how many links are bundled. By collapsing groups the entire view gives the user a clearer understanding of the graph. Information related to the groups and links is retained for drill-into to obtain the details inside each group on the same canvas and for user navigation across groups.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented graph visualization system, comprising:
a computer comprising a processing unit coupled to a memory, the memory storing executable instructions comprising:
a graph visually presented via a user interface, the graph presented as an arrangement of nodes and links between the nodes visually represented in a view via a user interface, the links comprising a forward link and a back link;a scaling component that incrementally scales the view of the graph based on operations on the nodes and the links, the operations include collapse of nodes into groups and links into roll-up links and expansion of the groups and the roll-up links, wherein the scaling component graphically replaces links between a node and a group or between groups with a roll-up link that visually conveys dependency between the node and the group or between the groups with a visually-displayed thickness of the roll-up link indicative relatively of a quantity of dependencies that exist in a given direction and a link count value which indicates the quantity of dependencies that are represented by the roll-up link; anda navigation tool that facilitates incremental access to collapsed content and update of the graph view of expanded content, when the navigation tool is hovered over a desired link, an information panel is presented that displays source and target node information and an additional action a user can take to obtain an additional option about the desired link.