VCExplorer: A Interactive Graph Exploration Framework Based on Hub Vertices with Graph Consolidation

TL;DR

VCExplorer is an interactive framework that combines graph visualization and summarization by focusing on actual hub vertices and their summaries, enabling efficient exploration of large, complex graphs.

Contribution

The paper introduces VCExplorer, a novel framework that emphasizes hub vertices and their summaries, improving graph exploration over traditional virtual vertex clustering methods.

Findings

Effective visualization of large graphs using hub-based summaries

Efficient algorithms for multi-subgraph graph aggregation

Experimental results demonstrate improved exploration efficiency

Abstract

Graphs have been widely used to model different information networks, such as the Web, biological networks and social networks (e.g. Twitter). Due to the size and complexity of these graphs, how to explore and utilize these graphs has become a very challenging problem. In this paper, we propose, VCExplorer, a new interactive graph exploration framework that integrates the strengths of graph visualization and graph summarization. Unlike existing graph visualization tools where vertices of a graph may be clustered into a smaller collection of super/virtual vertices, VCExplorer displays a small number of actual source graph vertices (called hubs) and summaries of the information between these vertices. We refer to such a graph as a HA-graph (Hub-based Aggregation Graph). This allows users to appreciate the relationship between the hubs, rather than super/virtual vertices. Users can navigate through the HA- graph by "drilling down" into the summaries between hubs to display more hubs. We illustrate how the graph aggregation techniques can be integrated into the exploring framework as the consolidated information to users. In addition, we propose efficient graph aggregation algorithms over multiple subgraphs via computation sharing. Extensive experimental evaluations have been conducted using both real and synthetic datasets and the results indicate the effectiveness and efficiency of VCExplorer for exploration.