Visual representation - multiple edges and direction of edges

Users Ratel
1

I’m not sure if I missed something but it seems to me like there are no edge directions (with arrows) or multiple edges between two nodes visualized in Ratels graph view.

In my example Leyla has the is_greater_than (i) and the is_part_of (is) connection to Michael but only the is_greater_than (i) edge is visualized. The is_part_of (is) connection is part of the graph legend (the purple label on the bottom) but there is no visual representation of it in the graph.

image
image1148×851 34 KB

The query is this one:

q(func: uid(0x2714, 0x2715, 0x2716)){
    uid,
    name,
    age,
    follows{
      uid,
      name
    },
    is_part_of{
      uid,
      name
    },
    is_greater_than{
      uid,
      name
    } 
  }

and I get the following json result:

"data": {
    "q": [
      {
        "uid": "0x2714",
        "name": "Michael",
        "age": 42,
        "follows": [
          {
            "uid": "0x2715",
            "name": "Pawan"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "uid": "0x2715",
        "name": "Pawan",
        "age": 28,
        "follows": [
          {
            "uid": "0x2716",
            "name": "Leyla"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "uid": "0x2716",
        "name": "Leyla",
        "age": 17,
        "is_part_of": [
          {
            "uid": "0x2714",
            "name": "Michael"
          }
        ],
        "is_greater_than": [
          {
            "uid": "0x2714",
            "name": "Michael"
          }
        ]
      }

Questions:

  1. Is it possible to show the is_part_of connection, too?

  2. Is it possible to show the direction of the edges?
    ( In this case Leyla — is_part_of ⟶ Michael and Leyla — is_greater_than ⟶ Michael )

2

Hi,

please add a issue requesting for arrows at

What you mean? the whole word?
If nodes do not have this edge, it will be ignored. If so, it appears to be a bug. Thus, it is up to another Issue to track this case.

3

I just saw, that there is an issue report / feature request already for this on github

I’m just a bit confused because

i saw these arrows already in some examples and in some other issue reports like in this one: dgraph ratel visualizer colors inacurate · Issue #1967 · dgraph-io/dgraph · GitHub

image
image1132×1120 78.9 KB

It’s not so much about the whole word (but indeed, it would be nice to be able to configure the acronyms, so that it is possible to show the whole words), it’s more about the fact, that the second connection between Leyla and Micheal (which is is_part_of) is not displayed at all. So it seems that a node can have more than one edge (only in Ratels graph visualization because the json shows both connections) but it also seems that two nodes can only have one connecting edge and not more than one.

Take this visual example of another graph database

image

It shows, that the node Person has five edges to the node Movie and one to itself (which is follows). I would assume that it should be very similar in Ratel but apparently it doesn’t look like that. In Ratel only one edge would be displayed between Person and Movie which doesn’t make sense to me but maybe I just missed something :roll_eyes:

4

Some time ago the Ratel’s engineers had changed the “view lib engine” Due performance. These screenshots are old.

So, this feels like a bug.

5

I see, but isn’t the concept of directed edges a fundamental part of graphs? I’m just wondering that such an essential “feature” is missing in Ratel’s graph visualization and i’m confused of the fact that it’s still not prioritized in the github issue tracker (especially since it’s reported on Jan 1, 2020 already).

I ask myself how other developers deal with that missing direction presentation. Do they use another visualization tools/apis to get a better visual representation or is the direction of edges simply not important to most of them?

I would really like to hear your opinion on that because I like dgraph so far and I don’t want to switch to another graph database only because of these lags in the visual representations

Are you able to create two nodes having more than one connecting edge to each other or is that issue only on my side?

6

Yes, it is. About the arrow thing. I have no idea what happened. I’ll bring that situation to them.

Speaking for myself, I rarely look at the graph view side. But it is really important to know, because it is didactic.

I agree with you that the visual part is important. I will report this.

I have to test the hipotesis. Cuz as I said, I rarely look at graphs visually. But I’ll test it. Until there, create the issue please.

1 Like