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Graphing Libraries for Java?

Posted by Cliff on from the caffienated-lines-arcs-and-arrows dept.

Node and Edge asks: "Many interesting problem domains involve some form of graph-based or graph-like information: network activity visualizations; social software; workflow management; P2P software development; and version control with branching, just to name a few. It is notoriously difficult for people to visualize a graph structure - unless it happens to be a strictly hierarchical tree-like structure, such as what we know from file-system explorers. Now, with all of that said, what graph libraries can you recommend? The following criteria apply, though they're not absolute: Java or Java bindings; simple to use for simple applications; and polished, extensible UI components. I'm familiar with JGraph, JUNG, Prefuse, OpenJGraph, Tigris GEF, Eclipse GEF, Graphviz, but have not had a chance to evaluate them all. Have you used any of these extensively? If so, can you provide any constructive advice? If not, can you recommend something else, ?"

1 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Workshop on Visualization by jdfekete · · Score: 5, Informative

    Katy Börner and I have been organizing a workshop on Information Visualization Infrastructures, including graph drawing packages. The results are available at http://vw.indiana.edu/ivsi2004/

    There are lots of different tradeofs involved. One being interactive vs. static graphics. Another being the size of the graphs.

    For static graphs, such as class hierarchies and such, Graphviz (http://www.graphviz.org/ works fine and is easy to integrate in a system. For some graphs, Graphviz will not work at all so you need to try first.

    For large or dense graphs, above 1000 nodes or more than 4 times more edges than vertices (5n etc), node-link diagrams don't work at all. You could use a matrix but people are not used at reading matrices.

    For interactive visualization of graphs, Jung (http://jung.sourceforge.net/) and Prefuse (http://prefuse.sourceforge.net/) are fine if you have small graphs ()

    If you are a graph wizard and want to analyze large social networks, you can take a look at Pajek (http://vlado.fmf.uni-lj.si/pub/networks/Pajek/) but it is not a free software and runs mostly on Windows.

    Other packages are ok for simple things, stereotyped things or more experimental things. You need to try them on your own problem to decide.