Visualizing RDF(S)-based Information

As RDF reaches maturity, there is an increasing need for tools that support it. A common and natural representation for RDF data is a directed labeled graph. Although there are tools to edit and/or browse RDF graph representations, we found their architecture rigid and not easily amenable to producing effective visual representations, especially for large RDF graphs. We present here GViz, a general purpose graph visualization tool, which allows one to easily build and fine-tune various visual exploratory scenarios for RDF data. GViz’s extended ability of customizing the visualization’s icons showed to be very useful in the context of visualizing RDF graph structures. Among the presented applications, we mention customizable selections, schema-instance comparison, instances comparison, and schemas comparison (schema evolution). GViz proved to be able not only to visualize large RDF data models, but also to be very flexible in designing scenario-specific queries to support the exploration process.