yFiles in Action - Visual Representation

I've been moving through the demos that are offered through the yFiles Package. The basic base demos get you started with a normal graph, inserting nodes and edges and labelling of the nodes and edges. Extensions of existing objects and fast reference of existing objects is also demonstrated. The random graph generator probably isn't too useful, but accessibility, definition and label of the graphs is definitely useful. I probably won't be extending any objects either.

To display the graphs, you need to specify the layout that you want. The module demo of is of a graph with twenty nodes with edges in different layout formats. For a quick visual understanding of what can be done, this demo is very informative. Incremental hierarchical and normal hierarchical formats seem to be the most appropriate format (surprise surprise, I'm creating a hierarchy). I originally thought tree but yFile trees appear to not recognise my structures as trees. I suppose their trees only want one parent and my nodes can have multiple parents. This is important, one of the problems of a previous research approach didn't address nodes with multiple parents. So it's best if we just don't have that constraint to begin with.

After choosing a layout, of the graph, you can output it quite easily using the IO handlers. The io demonstrations show reading in of gml files and outputting them out to images or placing them in a JPanel window. They can also be placed in html files. I don't think I need the extra functionality. It is also possible to create a dynamic graph that can be modified through a view. I also think that this is excessive for what I need to do. Very nifty because you can point and click nodes and objects and add edges ad hoc. But for my basic algorithm, I think creating a graph and showing it is sufficient.

So here are some visual representations of my very simple example.



This first picture shows our basic relationship, simple users to permissions.



This situation is an intermediate step with the addition of roles.



Finally, roles are merged. This is a very simple example.