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Thinking of Models as Graphs

The first step in any big data visualization and analysis process is to ingest your data. In the past, most developers thought of models as rows with attributes and references to other row identifiers. In keeping with that mentality, Perspectives pulled data from a relational database into its session-scoped model.

Relational social network data file.
Relational social network data are shown in rows of elements and attributes.

Modern graph visualization developers tend to conceptualize data differently. While many users still pull data from an RDBMS, an increasing number use graph-based data storage and think about their data in graph-like ways.

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Adding Dimension With a Swimlane Matrix

Swimlanes organize graph visualizations in a simple, user-friendly manner. Typically, process flows use swimlane diagrams to group components into individual categories, or lanes. Each node represents a task or activity and the lanes organize them by role, function, or department. However, because swimlanes are usually defined along a single axis, they tend to be used as alternatives to other graphical cues like text, coloring, or icons. In this scenario, swimlanes only add one additional dimension of data. Tom Sawyer Perspectives can help you show more.

In this Purchase Order workflow, the vertical lanes show the days on which tasks need to be performed, while the horizontal lanes define the task type. This helps keep the overall process on schedule.


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Growing Pains: Learning From SysML v1

The SysML v2 Visualization Origin Story

Systems Engineering is the discipline of integrating parts into a functioning whole. It is responsible for communicating needs and capabilities between stakeholders and specialists. In the early 2000s, members of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and the Object Management Group (OMG) joined together to create a graphical modeling language that was tailored to the needs of systems engineers. This produced the Systems Modeling Language, or SysML, built on top of the software-focused Unified Modeling Language (UML).

SysML v1 received mixed reviews from the systems engineering community after it was released in 2007. Its UML foundation saved designers of the language from reinventing core concepts in modeling and representation. And a community of UML tool vendors was ready to support it. However, SysML inherited UML’s weaknesses along with its strengths. There was a lack of connection between system structure and behavior. The representational approach was esoteric and rigid, making training difficult. Lack of interoperability between tools made sharing models painful. And ambiguous rules for completeness of diagrams relative to the model made many errors easy to create and hard to detect.