Complex Gremlin queries to output nodes/edges

Question

I am trying to implement a query and graph visualisation framework that allows a user to enter a Gremlin query, returning a D3 graph of results. The D3 graph is built using a JSON - this is created using separate vertices and edges outputs from the Gremlin query. For simple queries such as:

g.V.filter{it.attr_a == "foo"}

this works fine. However, when I try to perform a more complicated query such as the following:

g.E.filter{it.attr_a == 'foo'}.groupBy{it.attr_b}{it.outV.value}.cap.next().findAll{k,e->e.size()<=3}

- Find all instances of *value*
- Grouped by unique *attr_b*
- Where *attr_a* = foo
- And *attr_b* is paired with no more than 2 other instances of *value*

Instead, the output is of the following form:

attr_b1: {value1, value2, value3}
attr_b2: {value4}
attr_b3: {value6, value7}

I would like to know if there is a way for Gremlin to output the results as a list of nodes and edges so I can display the results as a graph. I am aware that I could edit my D3 code to take in this new output but there are currently no restrictions to the type/complexity of the query, so the key/value pairs will no necessarily be the same every time.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You've hit what I consider one of the key problems with visualizing Gremlin results. They can be anything. Gremlin results might not just be a list of vertices and edges. There is no way to really control this that I can think of. At the end of the day, you can really only visualize results that match a pattern that D3 expects. I'd start by trying to detect that pattern and visualize only in those cases (simply display non-recognized patterns as JSON perhaps).

Thinking of your specific example that results like this:

attr_b1: {value1, value2, value3}
attr_b2: {value4}
attr_b3: {value6, value7}

What would you want D3 to visualize there? The vertices/edges that were traversed over to get that result? If so, you might be stuck. Gremlin doesn't give you a way to introspect the pipeline to see what's passing through it. In other words, unless the user explicitly gathers vertices and edges within the pipeline that were touched you won't have access to them. It would be nice to be able to "spy" on a pipeline in that way, but at the moment it doesn't do that. There's been internal discussion within TinkerPop to create a new kind of pipeline implementation that would help with that, but at the moment, it doesn't exist.

So, without the "spying" capability, I think your only workarounds would be to:

1. detect vertex/edge list on your client side and only render those with d3. this would force users to always write gremlin that returned data in such a format, if they wanted visualization. put it in the users hands.
2. perhaps supply server-side bindings for a list of vertices/edges that a user could explicitly side-effect their vertices/edges into if their results did not conform to those expected by your visualization engine. again, this would force users to write their gremlin appropriately for your needs if they want visualization.