The Walrus Graph Visualization Tool
version 0.6.3
Mar 30, 2005
(c) 2000,2001,2002 CAIDA/UCSD
(http://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/)
Young Hyun <[email protected]>
DESCRIPTION
Walrus is a tool for interactively visualizing large directed graphs in three-dimensional space. It is technically possible to display graphs containing a million nodes or more, but visual clutter, occlusion, and other factors can diminish the effectiveness of Walrus as the number of nodes, or the degree of their connectivity, increases. Thus, in practice, Walrus is best suited to visualizing moderately sized graphs that are nearly trees. A graph with a few hundred thousand nodes and only a slightly greater number of links is likely to be comfortable to work with.
Walrus computes its layout based on a user-supplied spanning tree. Because the specifics of the supplied spanning tree greatly affect the resulting display, it is crucial that the user supply a spanning tree that is both meaningful for the underlying data and appropriate for the desired insight. The prominence and orderliness that Walrus gives to the links in the spanning tree, in contrast to all other links, means that an arbitrarily chosen spanning tree may create a misleading or ineffective visualization. Ideally, the input graphs should be inherently hierarchical.
Walrus uses 3D hyperbolic geometry to display graphs under a fisheye-like distortion. At any moment, the amount of magnification, and thus the level of visible detail, varies across the display. This allows the user to examine the fine details of a small area while always having a view of the whole graph available as a frame of reference. Graphs are rendered inside a sphere that contains the Euclidean projection of 3D hyperbolic space. Points within the sphere are magnified according to their radial distance from the center. Objects near the center are magnified, while those near the boundary are shrunk. The amount of magnification decreases continuously and at an accelerated rate from the center to the boundary, until objects are reduced to zero size at the latter, which represents infinity. By bringing different parts of a graph to the magnified central region, the user can examine every part of the graph in detail.
CHANGES
Since 0.6.2, released Feb 20, 2003:
- No changes to any functionality; just a licensing change to the GPL.
- Added 'palmtree.graph' to set of sample graphs.
Since 0.6.1, released Nov 4, 2002:
- Corrected equation for computing colors in guide.txt. No new features.
Since 0.6, released Apr 29, 2002:
- Re-implemented routines for hyperbolic transformations. No new features. Everything should work exactly as for v0.6.
Since 0.5, released Apr 19, 2002:
- Added support for zooming the display. The user can zoom in toward the central node or zoom out from it to an arbitrary degree.
- Added support for turning depth cueing off.
- Fixed bug in which picking would sometimes become temporarily inaccurate after the window is resized.
- Fixed bug in which the display would lock up if the user executed a command through the keyboard while concurrently interacting with the mouse.
Since 0.4, released Apr 12, 2002:
- Added support for temporarily hiding parts of the graph. For example, the user can display only the subtree rooted at the current central node. It should now be much easier to navigate and examine large complicated graphs, since occlusion can be eliminated by selective pruning.
- Added code to detect and warn about malformed spanning trees.
- Added support for quickly navigating to the parent of the current central node.
- Added support for resetting the rendering state. Loss of floating-point precision can cause the display to become wholly useless. This sometimes happens while navigating very large graphs.
Since 0.3, released Apr 1, 2002:
- Added support for computing the layout using extended precision arithmetic (about 30 decimal digits of precision). Previously, the layout calculations would sometimes yield invalid coordinates (NaNs) for some tall and bushy graphs. This problem went unnoticed because Java does not throw floating-point exceptions.
Since 0.2, released Jan 25, 2002:
- Added some more introductory documentation on the LibSea file format. This should help people to get up to speed quickly. See docs/guide.txt.
- Added support for overlaid node labels. Attribute values can now be shown in the display area next to the relavant nodes. These labels, however, are only temporary and disappear once the user moves or refreshes the window.
- Added support for selection attributes. A boolean attribute in the graph file can be used to specify which nodes or links are to be displayed.
- Added support for displaying attributes of list type. Previously, only scalar attributes could be displayed.
- Improved the layout of binary trees. Walrus now makes better use of available space when laying out binary trees.
- Fixed bug in which links would sometimes be drawn as black lines. If you had transparency enabled and then switched the coloring of links to RGB (that is, to colors stored in an attribute), then links would sometimes be drawn incorrectly as black lines.
- Fixed bug in which rotations would stop working when axes were disabled while running the nonadaptive render loop.
Since 0.1, released Dec 5, 2001:
- Re-implemented the picking algorithm. Picking is now more accurate and intuitive in behavior.
- Added full support for color to the nonadaptive render loop. The nonadaptive render loop is active when Rendering->Adaptive Rendering is unchecked.
- Fixed a refresh bug. The display would sometimes fail to refresh when the user clicked within the Walrus window to bring it to the front.
REQUIREMENTS
Walrus requires Java3D v1.2.1 (or later) and JDK 1.5.0 (or later).
Java3D: http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/3D/index.html
JDK: http://java.sun.com/j2se/
A hardware-accelerated graphics card is necessary for adequate performance. It is also useful to have a speedy machine with lots of memory (128MB is probably a minimum; 256MB or more is better; 512MB is probably required for a few hundred thousand nodes).
Windows 2000 users: Be sure to use the OpenGL version of Java3D and not the DirectX version, which has problems on this platform.
Linux users: We, as well as others, have had problems running Java3D on an NVIDIA card. Using JDK 1.4 and Java3D 1.3.1beta seems to help, but you may still experience instability.
Mac OS X 10.11.6 users: Oracle's Java might cause problems with Java3D and AWT. Using Apple's JDK 1.6.0_65 may prevent these errors.
Walrus was developed and tested on a Sun Ultra 60 with an Elite 3D card and 512MB of RAM, running Solaris 7, a box graciously donated by Sun.
DOCUMENTATION
See the 'docs' subdirectory for documentation. In particular, the file 'guide.txt' contains a brief guide to using Walrus (see also QUICK START below) and provides details on the input file format.
CONTACT INFORMATION
To report bugs, email [email protected]. For general inquiry, email [email protected].
A mailing list is available to discuss Walrus use and development. To subscribe, email [email protected] with
subscribe your-email-address
in the body (for example, 'subscribe [email protected]'). To unsubscribe, email [email protected] with
unsubscribe your-email-address
in the body. All messages to the list itself should be sent to [email protected].
Alternatively, you may use the following web page to subscribe, unsubscribe, view the archives, and so on:
http://login.caida.org/mailman/listinfo/walrus-dev
QUICK START
You can give Walrus a quick try by doing the following:
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Extract 'walrus-0.6.3.tar.gz' or 'walrus-0.6.3.zip' anywhere you wish. This will create a subdirectory named 'walrus-0.6.3' containing several JAR files, among other things.
For UNIX users...
The file walrus-0.6.3.tar.gz was packaged with the standard TAR utility and compressed with GNU GZIP (http://www.gzip.org). You can unpack it with the following command:
gzip -cd walrus-0.6.3.tar.gz | tar xvf -For Windows users...
The file walrus-0.6.3.zip was packaged in the common ZIP format. You can unpack it using a program like WinZip (http://www.winzip.com/).
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From the 'walrus-0.6.3' subdirectory, enter the following at a shell or command prompt:
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on UNIX systems with Sun's JDK:
java -cp mp.jar:antlrall-mod.jar:libsea.jar:walrus.jar H3Main
(Or execute the supplied script: ./walrus)
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on Windows with Sun's JDK:
java -cp mp.jar;antlrall-mod.jar;libsea.jar;walrus.jar H3Main
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Select the menu item File->Open (that is, 'Open' under the 'File' menu), and load the file 'champagne.graph' in the 'samples' subdirectory. The window will be blank while the file loads. This graph has 9175 nodes, 9174 tree links, and 6345 nontree links. This should load in a few seconds, but it can take up to several minutes to load larger graphs.
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Select Rendering->Start, once the Walrus logo reappears.
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Click and drag with the left mouse button to rotate the display. It is normal for parts of the graph to disappear during rotations. Walrus uses an adaptive rendering algorithm that tries to maintain a given framerate (currently hardcoded) by rendering only as much as it can within each time slot.
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Click on a node (yellow square) with the right mouse button to bring the node to the center. Parts of the graph may disappear during these translations because of adaptive rendering.
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Select Color Scheme->Predefined->Green-Olive-[Summer Sky].
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Select Rendering->Update.
At this point, you should have a display with nodes in green, tree links in olive green, and nontree links in a cobweb-like transparent blue. Using transparency like this is often a good way of exploring graphs with nontree links.
Another feature you may wish to try is continuous rotation. To activate continuous rotation, hold down the control key and click the left mouse button anywhere in the window. Now simply move the mouse (without pressing or holding down any buttons or any keys) to change the direction and speed of the rotation. The rotation vector is determined by the position of the mouse pointer relative to the center of the window. To stop the rotation, click anywhere in the window with the left mouse button.
There are a number of ways of hiding parts of the graph temporarily. Selective hiding is indispensable for navigating and examining complicated graphs. The Display menu contains the full list of operations for hiding and revealing parts of the graph. There are also convenient key bindings for some of these. Suppose, for example, that you wanted to focus your attention on a single subtree. You could hide all of the graph except that subtree by first right clicking on the root node of the subtree (to bring it to the center of the display) and then choosing Display->Narrow To Subtree. If the subtree was large and tall, you could hide all but the descendants that lie within a certain distance from the root node of the subtree to reduce the clutter and occlusion. You could do this by either choosing an item from the menu Display->Prune To Neighborhood or by pressing one of the keys '0' to '9'. Pressing '2', for example, would hide all but the descendants that lie within two hops of the root node.
For examining a graph in greater detail, zooming is helpful. Choosing Display->Zoom In (or pressing the key '.' [the same key as for '>']) will cause the display to zoom in toward the node at the center of the display. You can do this as many times as you want; each time increases the magnification of the display by 25%. Conversely, you can zoom out one step with Display->Zoom Out (or by pressing the key ',' [the same key as for '<']), and reset the display to normal magnification with Display->Zoom 1:1 (or by pressing the key '/').
As mentioned earlier, Walrus uses an adaptive rendering algorithm that tries to maintain a given framerate. You may try out the nonadaptive rendering algorithm for comparison by de-selecting Rendering->Adaptive Rendering and then selecting Rendering->Update. The nonadaptive algorithm can be more responsive and produce a smoother display for smaller graphs.
See 'guide.txt' in the 'docs' subdirectory for information on additional commands and menus not covered here.
BUILDING AND RUNNING
The following process is for Mac OS X 10.11.6 users:
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Download the source code from the following link:
https://www.caida.org/tools/visualization/walrus/#download
It is available as walrus-0.6.3-src.tar.gz or walrus-0.6.3-src.zip. You may unpack walrus-0.6.3-src.tar.gz by using the following command:
gzip -cd walrus-0.6.3-src.tar.gz | tar xvf -The walrus-0.6.3-src.zip can be unzipped using a program of your choice.
By unpacking either walrus-0.6.3-src.tar.gz or walrus-0.6.3-src.zip, a subdirectory called 'walrus-0.6.3-src' will be created. This directory, walrus-0.6.3-src, will have three JAR files (antlrall-mod.jar, libsea.jar, mp.jar) that will be mentioned later. The subdirectory of walrus-0.6.3-src named 'Walrus' contains the source code.
Alternatively, you may download the source code from this link:
https://github.com/CAIDA/walrus
However, you must install three JAR files (antlrall-mod.jar, libsea.jar, mp.jar) from the Walrus release package.
In this section, the directory containing the source code will be further referred to as the Walrus directory.
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Ensure that your machine is using Apple's JDK 1.6 which can be downloaded from https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1572. If your default JDK is not Apple's JDK 1.6 and that is the only JDK of version 1.6 that you have, define the Java home environment variable to Apple's JDK 1.6.
export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6)If your default JDK is not Apple's JDK 1.6 and you have multiple JDKs of version 1.6, examine all JDKs you have installed.
/usr/libexec/java_home -VThe above command will output a list of your JDKs with the version of each JDK listed as the first part on each line. Determine the version for Apple's JDK 1.6 and define the Java home environment variable to that specific JDK. For example, if the version for Apple's JDK was 1.6.0_65-b14-468, the command would look like this:
export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6.0_65-b14-468) -
In your Bash shell from the Walrus directory, include the current directory and the path to each of the three JAR files in the classpath environment variable. If each jar file was one directory above the Walrus directory, the command would be:
export CLASSPATH=../antlrall-mod.jar:../libsea.jar:../mp.jar:. -
From the Walrus directory, run this command to build Walrus:
make -
From the Walrus directory, run Walrus with the -cp option to specify the path to all three JAR files and the current directory to search for classes. If all three JAR files were in the Walrus directory, the command would be:
java -cp antlrall-mod.jar:libsea.jar:mp.jar:. H3Main -
If you wish to build a JAR file to distribute, run the following command:
make jarThe created JAR file will be called 'walrus.jar'. To run Walrus with walrus.jar, follow the instructions in the Quick Start section.
SAMPLE GRAPHS
The directory 'samples' contains the following sample graphs.
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simple.graph [15 nodes, 17 links; 2 attributes]
You may want to browse this file to see what a minimal input file looks like. The '@...=' text strings are simply comments, and though they make debugging easier, they are not significant nor required (see champagne.graph for an example of an input file without these).
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walrus-directory.graph [1103 nodes, 1105 links; 12 attributes]
A graph file generated from the UNIX directory tree containing the Walrus source files. This was generated using the perl scripts included in 'walrus-0.6.3/docs/dirgraph'.
Many of the values shown in a directory listing are included in this graph file as attributes. For example, the attribute 'full_name' contains the complete path of each file, and the attribute 'size' contains the file size. To see the values of these attributes, do the following. After loading the graph, select the attributes you would like to examine from the 'Node Label' menu. Then choose the menu item Rendering->Update (and Rendering->Start, if rendering has not been started). Now click on a node with the middle mouse button (or the right mouse button while holding down the shift key) to see the attributes values in the status bar at the bottom of the window.
The graph also contains two attributes, 'mtime_color' and 'size_class_color', which can be used to color nodes. For example, to color nodes by their modification time, first select Color Scheme->Node Color->RGB, and then Color Scheme->Node Color->Color Attribute->mtime_color. Now choose Rendering->Update (and Rendering->Start, if needed).
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champagne.graph [9175 nodes, 15519 links; 2 attributes]
An Internet topology graph generated from data collected by a skitter monitor (http://www.caida.org/tools/measurement/skitter/).
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palmtree.graph [3652 nodes, 3651 links; 2 attributes]
A graph contributed by Robert Hubley [email protected]. This organic looking graph, with an extremely long "trunk", nicely demonstrates the support in Walrus for extended-precision layout calculations. It would be impossible to lay out "tall" graphs like this with even double precision values.
The extension '.graph' is only a convention employed in these sample graphs and is not a requirement of Walrus.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Walrus was originally developed by Young Hyun at the University of California, San Diego under the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) Program. Support for this effort was provided by NSF grant ANI-9814421, DARPA NGI Contract N66001-98-2-8922, Sun Microsystems, and CAIDA members.
CAIDA's LibSea graph library distributed with Walrus uses the excellent and free ANTLR parser generator (see http://www.antlr.org). The file 'antlrall-mod.jar' is ANTLR 2.7.1, slightly modified to improve parsing time (specifically, the use of Class.newInstance() to allocate token objects was replaced with a compile-time object-allocation expression). The modifications reduced parsing time by 1-3 minutes (corresponding to a 30-50% reduction) on 50-80MB files.
Walrus uses the MPJAVA arbitrary-precision arithmetic package, which is a Java implementation of the arbitrary-precision package written by David H. Bailey, et al; see http://www.nersc.gov/~dhb/mpdist/mpdist.html. MPJAVA was written by Siddhartha Chatterjee and Herman Harjon; see http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/HARPOON.