Graph visualization

[trungkien210493]

SurrealDB supports the graph data but the surrealist does not have option to visualize data in graph. With graph data, the visualization will be better if we can draw nodes, edges like Neo4j Browser. You can consider the open source graph visualization as G6 which is free, support webgl render, multiple built-in plugins and functions

[nickchomey]

Fantastic idea!

I'll just add some other libraries to consider, though g6 looks great and I'm very happy to learn about it here.

Apache echarts is very mature and well supported. Being part of the Apache foundation is a very strong sign of capability and future support. https://echarts.apache.org/en/option.html#series-graph

Visjs network is quite powerful, but somewhat abandonned https://github.com/visjs/vis-network

Cytoscape is popular https://js.cytoscape.org/

And of course there's d3, but it's a beast so it would probably be more prudent to use one of the others. https://github.com/d3/d3

[nickchomey]

Thinking some more, given the diverse types of data store in surrealdb, I could see more options than just a network graph being quite useful in surrealist. Imagine being able to easily visualize a time series, or make metrics dashboards.

To that extent, g6 or echarts would be most appropriate.

Though there's always Apache superset, which uses echarts, for that sort of stuff (if it can be integrated with/receive data from surreal) https://preset.io/blog/2021-4-1-why-echarts/

[trungkien210493]

I don't think you need echart in that case, because you have grafana, I remember that surrealdb have a grafana datasource, hence, it can extend with other graph depend on your use case. So, just focus on the graph which is not supported (or best supported) by Grafana. In surrealist (or other database such as arangodb, neo4j), I think json and graph visualization is enough. The advance use case can be (refer to G6):

• group by (draw the graph and put some nodes into combo)
• time bar for change feed
• Graph algorithm (then we don't need to implement these algorithm in surrealdb). We can also extend the algorithm by using web assembly

[nickchomey]

As far as I'm aware, grafana is not free. And echarts/superset are an entirely different tool...

[trungkien210493]

Grafana have a cloud version, enterprise version and open source version (OSS). And you need echarts, look up the grafana plugin like https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/volkovlabs-echarts-panel/ The plugin is also free, I tested it.

[ankified]

This, and an equivalent of arrows.app for SurrealDB would be awesome!

[SOVLOOKUP]

https://github.com/dash14/v-network-graph
https://github.com/jacomyal/sigma.js
https://github.com/antvis/G6
https://github.com/antvis/Graphin

In terms of performance and ease of use, G6 is excellent

[trungkien210493]

Well, in newest version of surrealist https://github.com/surrealdb/surrealist/blob/main/package.json, they used sigma with no combo to group nodes, no built-in graph algorithm. I don't think this is a right choice. G6 is better solution

[nickchomey]

Yeah, it was a poor choice. I find the visualization in surrealist to be quite underwhelming

[macjuul]

Hey, maintainer of Surrealist here! I'm sorry to hear you found the new graph visualisation functionality to be underwhelming. While we believe the current implementation provides the necessary core functionality, we have plans to continue iterating upon it to implement functionality such as shortest path highlighting, visual relation creation, and community detection.

In terms of rendering, G6 certainly does looks promising! I am open to swapping out the current renderer if G6 can tackle our needs.

Finally I would like to say we love to hear feedback from everyone, as it helps shape the future of graph visualisation in Surrealist. Are there are specific features you are missing, or issues you are running into?

[nickchomey]

Sorry, when I said underwhelming, I wasn't specifically talking about the graph capabilities vs other libraries. I'm not sure about that though seemingly valid concerns were raised above.

What I really meant was that it would be great to have much more visualization capabilities than just a network graph - after all, Surrealdb is proudly multi-model, not just graphs. Sigma doesn't allow for this, as far as I can tell.

G6 is only for graphs, though is part of a broader suite
https://github.com/antvis

Apache Echarts also a full suite of visualization tools. I think some others have been mentioned in this discussion. Not sure which would be the most appropriate, though being part of Apache certainly makes echarts attractive.

Though, as I've mentioned, I think the ultimate goal has to be to get surrealdb to be compatible with something like Apache superset, Grafana and/or kibana. They're full-fledged visualization/observability/dashboard solutions that would allow for much broader and deeper analysis.

My bias is towards superset, as it is more of a Business Intelligence tool (and is interoperable with many data sources) whereas the others are more focused on logs, time series etc...

Doubtful that they could be integrated into surrealist, but that would be cool.

Perhaps that's all out of scope for this discussion though - I forgot that it's just about graph visualization.

[trungkien210493]

@macjuul thank you for your attention in this post, I had a look into a list of library to draw graph for my software a year ago, from commercial to open source e.g. keylines, G6, sigma, cytoscape, graphviz. The most powerful library is keylines but it is so expensive. Finally, I choose G6 because it has a lot of features (you can see some advance feature I think surrealist can expand with G6 in above) and it is open source. Also, with version 5, the render is now webgl, so, the performance can be compared to Keylines. LIVE QUERY + graph update based on change, then it will be super awesome feature.
@nickchomey , now, surrealdb has a datasource in grafana https://grafana.com/grafana/plugins/grafana-surrealdb-datasource/. You also can use json datasource to get data in Grafana if you use rest api in surrealdb. Then I think it will be better to push efforts into some features which was not supported by Grafana panel, like graph visualization or others