Network Workbench (NWB) Tool v0.8.0

Release Notes

Dec 21st, 2007

 

1.     General Description

The Network Workbench (NWB) tool (v0.8.0 release) is a network analysis, modeling, and visualization toolkit for biomedical, social science, and physics research. It is a standalone desktop application requiring Java 1.4+ JRE. The tool installs and runs on multiple platforms (see section 3.1 for details). 

It uses the Cyberinfrastructure Shell (CIShell) to integrate various datasets and algorithms. Although CIShell is developed using Java, it can integrate algorithms developed in other programming languages such as FORTRAN, C, and C++.

2.     Downloading, Installing and Uninstalling

Download the NWB tool v0.8.0 and make sure to save the download as a jar file.

To install the NWB tool, simply double click the jar file, or run the command line java -jar nwb-installer_0.8.0.jar or java -jar nwb-web-nstaller_0.8.0.jar

To uninstall the NWB tool, run Uninstall NWB from your operating system program menu or run uninstaller.jar (in NWB Install Directory/Uninstaller).

3.      What’s New

3.1.   Full Installer vs. Web Installer

In this release we continue providing a full installer nwb-installer_0.8.0.jar (size 62.5MB) that can run on Windows XP, Linux x86, and Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel).

We also provide a new web installer nwb-web-installer_0.8.0.jar (size 1.18MB) that supports to install NWB tool on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Linux x86, Solaris, and Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel).

Note:

·        The web installer is under testing right now. Please report any installation problem to nwb_helpdesk@googlegroups.com.

·        During installing the NWB tool, the web installer requires Internet connection and can automatically detect your local operating system and download the platform specific package (size 62MB).

·        To run the NWB tool on Windows Vista, your only option is to download and run the web installer.

·        All non-Java based algorithms, especially all algorithms written in FORTRAN (see table 1 in section 4.2) are NOT pre-compiled on Solaris and Windows Vista platforms. So they may not run properly on those platforms. We will fix this problem in the next release.

3.2.   New Algorithm Plug-ins and Improvements:

·        Added several plug-ins to support a prototype of loading an ISI file, extracting a co-authorship network, and updating the co-authorship network by merging nodes (authors with different names). A tutorial on this topic will be available soon.

·        Added a plug-in to integrate GUESS – a graph exploration system. Note: This plug-in works on Mac and Linux but does not work on Windows. We will try to fix the problem before the next release.

·        Added Balloon Graph visualization algorithm.

3.3.   New Data Converters, File Loader and Improvements:

·        Created a converter to converter Prefuse beta-version Tree to Prefuse alpha-version Tree.

·        Supported to load an ISI file.

·        Supported to load and automatically clean an ISI file.

·        Supported to load GraphML format with file extension of *.graphml

·        Re-implement nwb to graphml converter using XMLStreamWriter.

·        Many fixes in various converters.

3.4.   Community Improvements

·        New mailing lists

nwb_announce@googlegroups.com is a very low traffic mailing list for announcements regarding the NWB project and software releases, mostly release notes and important updates.

nwb_helpdesk@googlegroups.com is the main mailing list for the NWB community. Subscribe to this list to participate in the project, ask for help, report bugs (temporary solution), talk about NWB-related matters.

nwb_dev@googlegroups.com is NWB development mailing list. Subscribe to this list and take part in the NWB development, talk about NWB-development related matters or to keep up to date with NWB development.

·        NWB trac system

If you are interested in our development activities, the new features we are working on, the planned software releases, etc, please visit https://cns-trac.slis.indiana.edu/trac/nwb. We apology for closing the functionality to allow people using anonymous account to submit bugs/tickets to http://cns-trac.slis.indiana.edu/trac/nwb right now since the website got spammed. We will re-open our bug tracking system to the world soon. Please report bugs to nwb_helpdesk@googlegroups.com temporarily.

·        SVN repositories

The source code of all algorithm and converter plug-ins in the NWB tool is available at http://nwb.slis.indiana.edu/svn/nwb.

CISshell framework source code is available at https://cishell.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cishell.

4.      Features

4.1.   File Formats

The tool can load, process, and save the following file formats:

·        GraphML (*.xml or *.graphml)

·        XGMML (*.xml)

·        Pajek .NET (*.net)

    Pajek .Matrix (*.mat)

·        NWB (*.nwb)

    TreeML (*.xml)

CSV (*.csv)

ISI (*.isi)

      The tool supports viewing and saving of plain text files generated by algorithms.

      The tool can load and process an edge list with two columns (*.edge) but can’t save as an edge list.

      For detailed information about the above file formats, please visit the NWB Community Wiki.

4.2.   Algorithms

The tool provides over 60 network analysis, modeling, and visualization algorithms. They are developed using FORTRAN, Java, Perl, ocaml, etc. Detailed algorithm descriptions are available at the NWB Community Wiki. Here is the complete algorithm list in the v0.8.0 release.

Other algorithms not including in the release are also available for downloading from NWB repository at http://nwb.slis.indiana.edu/svn/nwb

 

Category

Algorithm

Language

Load

Load and Clean ISI File

Java

 

Load CSV Files

Java

 

Directory Hierarchy Reader

Java

Preprocessing

Random Node Deletion (Error Tolerance)

Java

 

High Degree Node Deletion (Attack Tolerance)

Java

 

Pathfinder Network Scaling

Java

 

Multipartite Joining

Java

 

Snowball Sampling

Java

 

Node Sampling

Java

 

Edge Sampling

Java

 

K-Core Extraction

Java

 

K-Coreness Annotation

Java

 

ISI Duplicate Remover

Java

 

Extract Co-Authorship Network

Java

 

Merge Nodes

Java

Modeling

Erdös-Rényi Random Graph

FORTRAN

 

Barabási-Albert Scale-Free

FORTRAN

 

Watts-Strogatz Small World

FORTRAN

 

Chord

Java

 

CAN

Java

 

Hypergrid

Java

 

PRU

Java

 

TARL

Java

Analysis

Node Degree

FORTRAN

 

Degree Distribution

FORTRAN

 

Undirected k-Nearest Neighbor

FORTRAN

 

Watts-Strogatz Clustering Coefficient

FORTRAN

 

Watts-Strogatz Clustering Coefficient Versus Degree

FORTRAN

 

Diameter

FORTRAN

 

Average Shortest Path

FORTRAN

 

Shortest Path Distribution

FORTRAN

 

Node Betweenness Centrality

FORTRAN

 

Connected Components

FORTRAN

 

Weak Component Clustering

Java

 

Node Indegree

FORTRAN

 

Node Outdegree

FORTRAN

 

Indegree Distribution

FORTRAN

 

Outdegree Distribution

FORTRAN

 

Directed k-Nearest Neighbor

FORTRAN

 

Single Node In-Out Degree Correlations

FORTRAN

 

Page Rank

FORTRAN

 

Burst Detection

Java

Search

CAN Search

Java

 

Chord Search

Java

 

k Random-Walk Search

Java

 

Random Breadth First Search

Java

Visualization

Circular (JUNG)

Java

 

Pre-defined Positions (prefuse beta)

Java

 

Radial Tree / Graph (prefuse alpha)

Java

 

Radial Tree / Graph with Annotation (prefuse beta)

Java

 

Tree Map (prefuse beta)

Java

 

Tree View (prefuse beta)

Java

 

Balloon Graph (prefuse alpha)

Java

 

Force Directed with Annotation (prefuse beta)

Java

 

Kamada-Kawai (JUNG)

Java

 

Fruchterman-Rheingold (prefuse alpha)

Java

 

Fruchterman-Rheingold with Annotation (prefuse beta)

Java

 

Spring

Java

 

Small World Visualization

Java

 

Parallel Coordinations (demo)

Java

 

LaNet

ocaml

 

GUESS

Jython/Java

Tools

Gnuplot

 

 

Graph Analysis Toolkit

Java

Other plug-ins

Scheduler Tester

Java

 

Converter Tester

Java

 

Graph to Tables

Java

                   Table 1: A list of algorithms in the NWB Tool v0.8.0

4.3.   Converters and Conversion Service

The tool provides a set of converters and a conversion service that automatically transforms data from one format to another. The conversion service tries to find a chain of converters that can transform the input data format to one that an algorithm can accept. Figure 1 shows the core conversion graph supported by the NWB tool v0.8.0 release. Figure 2 shows a detailed conversion graph including many converters that

 

    

 

        Figure 1: Core Conversion Graph in the NWB Tool v0.8.0

 

4.4.   Other Features

·        ·   Sample Data: The tool provides several sample datasets in NWB Installation Directory/sampledata.

·           Working Completely on Mac OS X PowerPC and Intel. To make sure that all visualization algorithms using AWT or Swing work properly, NWB requires Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 5. Please go to the Apple website (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304586) for details.

·        ·   References and Documentations of Algorithms: When a user selects an algorithm from the menu, an acknowledgement appears in the console. The acknowledgement contains the original authors of the algorithm, the developers, the integrators, a reference, and the URL to the reference if available. Furthermore, the acknowledgement includes a URL to the algorithm description at the NWB community wiki website at https://nwb.slis.indiana.edu/community.

·         Scheduler: The Scheduler allows users to monitor the progress of running algorithms and to stop/pause/resume running algorithms that implement the scheduling API. A scheduler tester algorithm is provided to demonstrate the capabilities of the scheduler.

·           Invoke Gnuplot through the NWB tool: the tool provides a plug-in that can invoke Gnuplot --- a portable command-line driven interactive data and function plotting utility. This plug-in works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. To make the plug-in work on Linux and Mac, the tool requires a working installation of the Gnuplot package. It has been packaged in the NWB tool for Windows installation.

·           Graph Analysis Toolkit is a nice tool for getting the insight of your datasets. It provides such rich information as number of nodes, number of edges, the density of a graph, directed vs. undirected graph, whether the graph has self-loops and/or duplicate edges, whether there’s a potential error when a graph claims to be an undirected graph but has duplicate edges or self loops, whether the graph has weakly connected components, whether the graph has strongly connected components, etc.  

 

5.      Known Issues

This list covers some of the known problems with NWB Tool v0.3.0. Please read this before reporting any new bugs.

·        · Algorithm Performance: Algorithms developed in FORTRAN are more scalable and efficient when comparing to Java-based implementations. They can generate and deal with large networks with over 1,000,000 nodes, which Java algorithms generally cannot.

·        ·Visualization Algorithms: The Kamada-Kawai and Fruchterman Reingold algorithms cannot handle networks with 1000 nodes because the algorithms themselves have high complexity. It takes excessive time for JUNG-based visualization algorithms, including Circular and Spring Layout, to visualize a graph with over 1000 nodes and they cannot handle a graph with over 5000 nodes in general.

·        ·Stop a Running Algorithm: Although the new scheduler allows users to stop/pause/resume a running algorithm, only algorithms written in Java that implement the ProgressTrackable interface can be controlled by the scheduler. So far, only a few algorithms integrated in the tool implement this interface. A scheduler tester algorithm under FileàTest is provided to demonstrate the capabilities of the scheduler.

6.      Icons

The NWB tool uses the following icons to represent different datasets:

  Network

  Tree

  Plain text file that can be plotted using gnuplot

  Other text file

  Unknown file format or data format

7.      Report Bugs

Please report bugs to nwb_helpdesk@googlegroups.com temporarily. We apology for closing the functionality to allow people using anonymous account to submit tickets to http://cns-trac.slis.indiana.edu/trac/nwb right now since the website got spammed. We will re-open our bug tracking system to the world soon.