Graph drawing is an important area in computer science and it has many different application areas. For example, graphs can be used to visualize structures like networks and databases. When the graphs are really big, however, it becomes difficult to draw them so that the user can get a good overview of the whole graph and all of its data. There exist a number of different algorithms that can be used to draw graphs, but they have a lot of differences. The goal of this report was to find an algorithm that produces graphs of satisfying quality in little time for the purpose of ontology engineering, and implement it using a platform that visualizes the graph using JavaFX. It is supposed to work on a visualization table with a touch display. A list of criteria for both the algorithm and the application was made to ensure that the final result would be satisfactory. A comparison between four well-known graph visualization algorithms was made and “GEM” was found to be the best suited algorithm for visualizing big graphs. The two platforms Gephi and Prefux were introduced and compared to each other, and the decision was made to implement the algorithm in Prefux since it has support for JavaFX. The algorithm was implemented and evaluated, it was found to produce visually pleasing graphs within a reasonable time frame. A modified version of the algorithm called GEM-2 was also introduced, implemented and evaluated. With GEM-2, the user can pick a specific number of levels to be expanded at first, additional levels can then be expanded by hand. This greatly improves the performance when there is no need to expand the whole graph at once, however, it also increases the amount of edge crossings which makes the graph less visually pleasing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-133071 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Örnberg, Dennis |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Databas och informationsteknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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