Constellation : A Graph-Focused Data Visualisation & Interactive Analysis Application

Constellation is a graph-focused data visualisation and interactive analysis application enabling data access, federation and manipulation capabilities across large and complex data sets.

Vision Statement

Constellation is a first class, domain agnostic data visualisation and analysis application enabling the user to solve large and complex data problems in a simple and intuitive way.

• Users: data analysts, data scientists, and all people interested in graph data analysis.
• Data analysis domains: graph datasets with rich feature data e.g. social networks, network infrastructure, chemical composition, etc.

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Prerequisites

• Constellation requires at least Open JDK 8 with JFX 8 support build to be installed and is known to work on Windows 64-bit and Linux 64-bit.
• The OpenGL graph display works with NVIDIA and ATI graphics cards that support OpenGL 3.3 or later. It is known to not work with Intel on-board graphics cards.

Run Constellation

Unzip the constellation.zip bundle and double click the bin/constellation64.exe for Windows or run the bin\constellation shell script for Linux.

There is currently no support for Mac and the feature request is tracked by Issue #21.

Build Constellation

To build Constellation from source code do the following:

• Download NetBeans 8.2
• Download the Open JDK 8 with JFX 8 from Azul website for Windows 64 bit build or Linux 64 bit build
• Clone this repository
• Update the netbeans.conf file’s netbeans_jdkhome entry (The file can be found under <C:\Program Files\NetBeans 8.2\etc> folder)
• Open the Constellation_Core module suite from NetBeans
• Important Files -> build.xml -> Right click -> Update dependencies and clean build
• Right click -> Run

Package Constellation

To package Constellation in a zip bundle do the following:

• In NetBeans, expand Constellation_Core -> Important Files
• Right click on Build Script and run the build-zip target

This will create a dist/constellation.zip file. It does not contain the JRE as that depends on the platform you wish to run it on.

The JRE location Constellation looks for is defined in etc/constellation.conf. For example, if you wanted to package a JRE in the zip bundle, copy the jre into the same folder level as bin and update the jdkhome variable to the name of the JRE folder.

Common Troubleshooting Checks

• You can check whether your graphics card is supported by following these steps:
  • Click on File > New Graph to create a graph
  • Click on Experimental > Build Graph > Sphere Graph to create a random graph.
  • If you can see a graph try to interact with it using the mouse.
  • If the graph view remains blank, you may not have a supported graphics card.
• Click on Help > JOGL Version to see the graphics card capabilities of your machine.
• Click on Help > Show Logs to view Constellation log information.