UI Design Question

G

Guadala Harry

I have a need to display nodes in a hierarchy - an inverted tree of sorts -
but a bit more complicated than a simple tree or set of inverted trees. The
nodes I'm dealing with exist in a definite hierarchy, however any given node
can have more than one parent and can have multiple children (except for the
top/root nodes). This is different than a tree in that in a tree, any given
node can have at most one parent.

Anyway, I need to display these nodes and their relationships graphically on
an Web page. I'd appreciate some suggestions for how to accomplish this
visual display. I don't think I can use a simple tree/list view (like in
Windows Explorer) because in those, any given node can have at most one
parent (unless the node is displayed more than once - which I don't want to
do). I'd be happy just to even have some boxes containing a short bit of
text (to represent a node) and some connecting lines - but how to accomplish
this? Note: The nodes and their relationships are stored in a database, and
the graphical representation must be created at runtime.

Thanks!
 
C

Curt_C [MVP]

sounds like a family tree type design. perhaps a search on that may lead to
what you are after.
Sounds like 3 tables to me though.
1) Nodes
2) Parents (1 to many)
3) Chidrem (1 to many)
 
G

Guadala Harry

I already have the table design hammered out - but how to dislay it all
graphically in a Web page? I suppose a "brute force" method would involve
using GDI+ on the server to crank out a diagram that gets saved as a jpg
that is in turn referenced by an aspx - but that's a lot of work. I was
hoping for something simpler. Any ideas?

Thanks

-G
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
473,744
Messages
2,569,483
Members
44,901
Latest member
Noble71S45

Latest Threads

Top