tchigher / constellation

A graph-focused data visualisation and interactive analysis application.

Constellation

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.

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.

Download Constellation

Download Constellation by going to the release page.

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:

1. Click on File > New Graph to create a graph
2. Click on Experimental > Build Graph > Sphere Graph to create a random graph.
3. If you can see a graph try to interact with it using the mouse.
4. 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.

Contributing to Constellation

For more information please see the contributing guide.

Acknowledgments

Third party libraries and assets were used in development of Constellation, please view attribution list for details.