Prefuse: Reloading of XML files

Question

Hello all,

I am a new to the prefuse visualization toolkit and have a couple of general questions. For my purpose, I would like to perform an initial visualization using prefuse (graphview / graphml). Once rendered, upon a user click of a node, I would like to completely reload a new xml file for a new visualization. I want to do this in order to allow me to "pre-package" graphs for display.

For example. If I search for Ted. I would like to have an xml file relating to Ted load and render a display. Now in the display I see that Ted has nodes associated called Bill and Joe. When I click Joe, I would like to clear the display and load an xml file associated with Joe. And so on.

I have looked into loading one very large xml file containing all node and node relationship info and allowing prefuse to handle this using the hops from one level to another. However, eventually I am sure that system performance issues will arise due to the size of data.

Thanks in advance for any help, John

Answer 1

Of course as you said, one option is loading all nodes and then set the nodes you don't need to be invisible. Prefuse scales fairly well, but of course it has its limits. The second option is to just create a brand new panel and replace the old panel. I've used the option 2 and it works quite well.