Chisio Web : a web-based framework for customizable visualization of relational information

Abstract

Graphs are widely used to represent complex relational information. Graph visualization is crucial for effective analysis of information. In simple graphs, nodes are generally considered as uniform-sized components and they cannot be nested. This is often not sufficient to visualize complex relationships, because relational information is often clustered or hierarchically organized into groups or nested structures. There exist many free, open source software in the field of web-based graph visualization. However, none fully supports compound or clustered graphs. Moreover, customization provided by such software is often limited to the basic visual properties of nodes and edges. It requires a lot of effort to build an advanced customization of visual properties and interactive functionality with these software. In this thesis, we introduce a free, open source, general-purpose, web-based graph visualization framework, named Chisio Web (ChiWeb). ChiWeb supports visualization, interactive editing and layout of both simple and compound graphs. ChiWeb is implemented in ActionScript language and based on Flare, which is an open source ActionScript library designed for data visualization. ChiWeb is specifically designed for easy customization with respect to visualization and functionality. ChiWeb can be used as a library to create a custom graph visualization with an advanced application behavior for particular needs of a specific domain. The elements and functionality that can be easily customized with ChiWeb are: visual styles, controls for interactive events such as node creation, key and mouse functionality, context menus, toolbars, and inspector windows. Furthermore, ChiWeb’s architecture allows easy integration of new graph layout algorithms.