In July 2017, the R&D project “Development of an interactive tool for the visual analysis of very large graph data” promoted by the Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB) started in Leipzig. The goal of this collaborative project between the Institute for Applied Informatics (InfAI) and TIQ Solutions GmbH is to develop a flexible tool for interactive big data analysis, especially for large quantities of interconnected data.

In the last few years, a growing awareness among customers of business intelligence (BI) solutions for advanced data analysis has been observed. While customers asked for pure reporting and dashboarding solutions a few years ago, data mining projects are now in their focus. On the one hand, this is due to the increasing professionalism of the customers, who are more and more aware of their data worlds due to their BI solutions and thus put more complex demands on the analysis. On the other hand, new technologies, methods and software from big data ecosystems also make it possible to calculate and thus analyze these complex requirements in customer-acceptable operating times.

The aim of the project is to develop a new, individually configurable front-end for the analysis and visualization of interconnected data (so-called graph data) with the goal of providing the end user with self-service BI solutions. For the first time, the end user is given a tool to create abstracted, professional-driven views on widely distributed networks and graphs. This enables him to analyze and illustrate complex relationships, such as the recognition of patterns in graphs and their aggregation to a distributed and scaling Big Data graph database out of his good practice.
Due to the complexity and research-intensive challenges involved in implementing the project, TIQ Solutions GmbH cooperates with InfAI. As a private institute at the University of Leipzig, InfAI is introducing the graph analysis tool Gradoop (Graph Analytics with Hadoop) developed in cooperation with the National Big Data Competence Center ScaDS Dresden / Leipzig to the project. Gradoop is used for the distributed integration, storage and analysis of very large graphs based on existing Big Data technologies such as HDFS, HBase and Flink. In addition, Gradoop can deal with large amounts of graph data via an extended property graph model. With generic operators, data integration and data analysis, processes can be defined and distributed using a workflow language. Also the analysis of previously not modeled relationships is possible via subgraphs. The Gradoop framework has already achieved high visibility in the Big Data Community. For the application in companies, however, the extensions to be developed as part of the R&D project are needed.

The project thus combines the development and project experience from the BI projects of TIQ Solutions GmbH as well as the expert knowledge on graph databases and the innovative Gradoop by InfAI as a basis. The explicit objectives of the cooperation are, on the one hand, the transfer of knowledge and technology from the Gradoop project to the Saxon economy; on the other hand the joint research and development of new methods for the efficient visualization and analysis of very large graphs.

Project partners are the Institute for Applied Computer Science (InfAI) and TIQ Solutions GmbH.

The project “Development of an interactive tool for the visual analysis of very large graph data” is funded as part of of the R&D Collaborative Project Support of the Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB) /European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

 

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Project duration: 07/2017 – 06/2019

 

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