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I'm researching on a way to graphically display linked items within a database. I have a list of screens on a HMI SCADA system and I'm trying to take a list of screens with links to other screens so that I can show a chart representing how each screen is linked to another. Some screens can link to several screens via navigation buttons.

What I am thinking is doing this through MS Access to build the database and then use Visio to build it, but I thought I would ask here to see if anyone might have an idea that would be easier to do what I want without me having to design this from scratch.

I would have one master table such as this:

ID           Screen
1            Home
2            Page1
3            Page2
4            Page3
5            Page4
6            Page5
7            Page6
8            Page7
9            Page8
10           Page9

Then I would have another table that holds the links. ID is Primary key and MID (master ID) and LID (link ID) are linked to ID in the master table.

ID           MID          LID
1            1            2
2            1            3
3            1            4
4            1            5
5            2            1
6            2            6
7            3            1
8            3            4
9            3            7
10           3            8
11           3            9
12           3            10

From here, I would want to build a chart of some kind that would draw the Screen names in boxes and show lines that link the boxes together.

Any ideas that would improve this? I would be open to other programs if it would make this easier. Preferably free programs.

Also, I can code in VBA, python, and I just started learning Java if this information will help.

Martijn Pieters
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raetrace
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  • For formatting help, click the big fat orange question mark in the upper right corner of the post editor. You don't need to resort to horrible HTML hacks to get columns. – Charles Jun 27 '14 at 22:40
  • For anyone finding this question way later: I've built some code that will do this sort of thing to produce IDEF-0 ICOM graphics between elements that are defined in an Access database. If there is any interest, let me know and I can spend some time converting it to an answer. – SmrtGrunt Apr 10 '19 at 18:14

1 Answers1

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It sounds like you need a graph visualizer, where your screens will be your nodes and their connections will be your edges.

First I would find a graph visualizer that you want to use, then figure out how to store your data based on that.

Since you said you know Python, maybe you should check out one of the libraries in this question. I've also seen some Excel plugins that do graph visualization, but I imagine they aren't cheap.

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Seth Moore
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