About the journal

• Home page
• Contact information
• Aims and scope
• Indexing information
• Editorial policies
• ComSIS consortium
• Journal boards
• Managing board

For authors

• Information for contributors
• Paper submission
• Article submission through OJS
• Copyright transfer form
• Download section

For readers

• Forthcoming articles
• Current issue
• Archive

For reviewers

• View and review submissions

News

• Journal's Facebook page
• Calls for special issues
• New issue notification

Visualization of path patterns in semantic graphs

José Paulo Leal¹

1. CRACS & INESC-Tec LA, Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto
   Porto, Portugal
   zp@dcc.fc.up.pt

Abstract

Graphs with a large number of nodes and edges are difficult to visualize. Semantic graphs add to the challenge since their nodes and edges have types and this information must be mirrored in the visualization. A common approach to cope with this difficulty is to omit certain nodes and edges, displaying sub-graphs of smaller size. However, other transformations can be used to summarize semantic graphs and this research explores a particular one, both to reduce the graph’s size and to focus on its path patterns. A-graphs are a novel kind of graph designed to highlight path patterns using this kind of summarization. They are composed of a-nodes connected by a-edges, and these reflect respectively edges and nodes of the semantic graph. A-graphs trade the visualization of nodes and edges by the visualization of graph path patterns involving typed edges. Thus, they are targeted to users that require a deep understanding of the semantic graph it represents, in particular of its path patterns, rather than to users wanting to browse the semantic graph’s content. A-graphs help programmers querying the semantic graph or designers of semantic measures interested in using it as a semantic proxy. Hence, a-graphs are not expected to compete with other forms of semantic graph visualization but rather to be used as a complementary tool. This paper provides a precise definition both of a-graphs and of the mapping of semantic graphs into a-graphs. Their visualization is obtained with a-graphs diagrams. A web application to visualize and interact with these diagrams was implemented to validate the proposed approach. Diagrams of well-known semantic graphs are presented to illustrate the use of a-graphs for discovering path patterns in different settings, such as the visualization of massive semantic graphs, the codification of SPARQL or the definition of semantic measures. The validation with large semantic graphs is the basis for a discussion on the insights provided by a-graphs on large semantic graphs: the difference between a-graphs and ontologies, path pattern visualization using a-graphs and the challenges posed by large semantic graphs.

Key words

Semantic Graph Visualization, Semantic Graph Summarization, Linked Data Visualization, Path Pattern Discovery, Semantic Graph Transformation

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS180717038L

Publication information

Volume 17, Issue 1 (January 2020)
Year of Publication: 2020
ISSN: 2406-1018 (Online)
Publisher: ComSIS Consortium

Full text

Available in PDF
Portable Document Format

How to cite

Leal, J. P.: Visualization of path patterns in semantic graphs. Computer Science and Information Systems, Vol. 17, No. 1, 229-252. (2020), https://doi.org/10.2298/CSIS180717038L