Plug-and-Play Visual Subgraph Query Interfaces

This book details recent developments in the emerging area of plug-and-play (PnP) visual subgraph query interfaces (VQI). These PnP interfaces are grounded in the principles of human-computer interaction (HCI) and cognitive psychology to address long-standing limitations to bottom-up search capabilities in graph databases using traditional graph query languages, which often require domain experts and specialist programmers. This book explains how PnP interfaces go against the traditional mantra of VQI construction by taking a data-driven approach and giving end users the freedom to easily and quickly construct and maintain a VQI for any data sources without resorting to coding. The book walks readers through the intuitive PnP interface that uses templates where the underlying graph repository represents the socket and user-specified requirements represent the plug. Hence, a PnP interface enables an end user to change the socket (i.e., graph repository) or the plug (i.e., requirements) as necessary to automatically and effortlessly generate VQIs. The book argues that such a data-driven paradigm creates several benefits, including superior support for visual subgraph query construction, significant reduction in the manual cost of constructing and maintaining a VQI for any graph data source, and portability of the interface across diverse sources and querying applications. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the notion of PnP interfaces, compares it to its classical manual counterpart, and reviews techniques for automatic construction and maintenance of these new interfaces. In synthesizing current research on plug-and-play visual subgraph query interface management, this book gives readers a snapshot of the state of the art in this topic as well as future research directions.

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