Technical Documents

The HaleyAuthority Visualization Export

By Keith Bare

In certain instances tree control used by HaleyAuthority and other business rules authoring tools may not be the best format to help users visualize and understand the structure of the Conceptual Role Model. The HaleyAuthority Visualization Export provides the ability to visually display the Conceptual Role Model as a graph, not a tree.

Concepts can have one generalization or multiple generalizations. For example, in the Conceptual Role Model below the concept "bicycle" only possesses one generalization, "a method of transportation," as shown in figure 1.

However, if the user wishes to define the concept "bicycle" as both a kind of "toy" and a kind of "method of transportation" multiple inheritance must occur. Multiple inheritance occurs in cases when it conceptually makes sense to classify a concept as having multiple generalizations. As indicated in figure 2 below users can classify a concept as possessing multiple generalizations. In cases like this, the structure of the Conceptual Role Model may not be easily evident when viewed as a tree.

Figure 1

Figure 1: Classifying a Concept with One Generalization

Figure 2

Figure 2: Classifying a Concept with Two Generalizations

Multiple inheritance allows instances of "bicycle" to participate in relations with roles for both the instances of "toy" and the instances of "method of transportation." In the example figure below, an instance of "bicycle" in the example "BikeTech CommuterBike," is able to fill the role for "method of transportation" in the relation "A person uses a method of transportation to travel to work."

Figure 3

Figure 3: Additional Instance Added to Bicycle

In the current version of HaleyAuthority user would view the concepts "method of transportation" and "toy" in tree control format. Users can see from this screenshot that a "bicycle" is a "method of transportation." However, how would the user know that the bicycle was also a kind of "toy?"

Figure 4

Figure 4: Concept Expanded but cannot tell bicycle is a kind of toy

In the screenshot below user could correctly see that the bicycle is both a kind of toy and method of transportation. By expanding and collapsing different branches, users can see that the concept "bicycle" appears twice. However, this does not really clarify to the user that the two bicycles are the same concept.

Figure 5

Figure 5: Concepts expanded, Bicycle Appears Twice

Utilizing HaleyAuthority Visualization Export a user can easily visualize the actual structure of the Conceptual Role Model. In the screenshot below, a user can easily see that a "bicycle" is both a "method of transportation" and a "toy." This visualization differs from the traditional tree control format as there is only one concept of "bicycle" with two arrows. The two arrows each point to different generalization which indicate a "bicycle" is both a kind of "toy" and "method of transportation." This format of visualization accurately describes the fact that a bicycle is a single concept with two generalizations.

Figure 6

Figure 6: HaleyAuthority Visualization Export representation of Conceptual Role Model

In a large knowledgebase, the amount of information displayed may become overwhelming. Many users may find it hard to visualize the structure of the Conceptual Role Model. The tree control format works best when users are focusing on a few concepts, instances, and phrases while keeping the majority of the Conceptual Role Model collapsed. However, when users are focusing on many concepts, instances, and phrasings the screen will become very overwhelming if many concepts were expanded. Additionally, while keeping particular parts of the tree control collapsed users may prevent excessive scrolling; adding relations by drag-and-drop is very difficult when the whole tree is not expanded. A good example of this is the ACORD conceptual role model in which over 3,500 terms.

The HaleyAuthority Visualization Export will be included as a plug-in for HaleyAuthority 6.0. It will not be available for earlier versions since it required some extensions to the export plug-in API. Visualizations are created in the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format, which is a standard defined by the W3C and supported by software such as Adobe Illustrator and Visio. SVG is also XML, which will allow users to customize generated reports using XSL.