Visualizing Metamorph Definitions
Please note: The information on this page is not up-to-date.
The MorphVis class has been moved to the metafacture-runner package. This package needs to be updated to reflect this.
The processing model behind Metamorph is that of a data flow. Hence it is straight forward to visualize Metamorph as a directed network, representing the respective flow. Here is a modest example:
Blue ellipses represent data sources while green circles represent data output. In our example we have a process with two combination stages and several functions applied to intermediate data. Stages in which data is collected are marked with a gray title bar showing the name of the operation. Functions are represented by white boxes. Both contain all parameters as name-value-lists. If lookup operations are included, the respective maps are depicted as gray tables. Finally, recursion is symbolized by yellow ellipses.
A visualization is generated by executing the class org.culturegraph.mf.MorphVis with a Metamorph definition as
argument. The output is a graph description in the dot language (see
http://www.graphviz.org/content/dot-language). To generate a
graphical representation any software compatible with the dot language can be
used. The most obvious choice is Graphviz (http://www.graphviz.org/).
Here is an example for a Bash script using the Graphviz dot layouter:
#!/bin/bash
FORMAT=$1
FILE=$2
java org.culturegraph.mf.MorphVis $FILE | dot -T$FORMAT > $FILE.$FORMATMake sure to include the Graphviz binaries in your $PATH variable.
Related Bash scripts can also be found in the bin/ folder.