SPIDER-graph: A model for heterogeneous graphs extracted from a relational database

Abstract

An adapted modeling and visualization technique of links and interactions between several objects,e.g. customers and products, social network and etc,is a precious mean to permit a good understanding of a lot of situations in the enterprise's context. In this latter context, most of the time, these objects and their relations are stored in relational databases. But extracting and modeling heterogeneous graphs from databases are outside of the classical graph models possibilities, moreover when each node contains a set of values. On the other hand, graph models can be a natural way to present these graphs and facilitates their query. In this way, we propose a graph model named SPIDER-Graph which is adapted to represent interactions between complex heterogeneous objects extracted from a relational database. This model is used in our approach of heterogeneous object graph extraction from a relational database which is detailed in this paper. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.