SNA Tools and Formats diagram - updated

16 Nov Update: I've updated the diagram, and made it easier to read - the link now points to a pdf version. The same license applies as for the whole blog - Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike v3.0. Do let me know, though - it's always interesting to find out how your work is used.

Some time ago, I was struggling to work out how I could evaluate a new social network analysis tool - one that made use of some obscure format. In order to give a new tool a fair test, I always use a specific group of datasets, that I know inside out. Almost inevitably, the new tool will require that they all be translated into some obscure format. But, given the tools already out there, there's always a chance that I can some combination of existing tools will do it for me. In the end, I drew a map to help me navigate this process.

Now, after many requests, I've revised the map. As before, if you have any more information, corrections, even objections, I will endeavour to respond - and quicker, this time. Mea culpa.

Comments

[Clara Pelaez]

Thank you very much! This is extremely useful!

[rick davies]

This is a very useful diagram, but it needs magnification to make it more readable.
Could you provide a bigger version?

[Bill Hansen]

I can't see it well enough to evaluate it. Can you make it much bigger and add some description so that I can interpret the meaning of the connections? That would help me a lot.

[Mark Round]

Thanks, all, for the comments. I've worked out how the fix the formatting issue. Now just waiting for some vendors to provide promised information on their tools.

On the issue of the meaning of the links, I should note that there is a lot of complexity abstracted away in any such representation. Here, any link from a format i to a tool j just means "tool j can read format j" (and vc vs).

[Mark Round]

So - the new format for the picture is pdf - although the default rotation isn't ideal, it should be a huge improvement. All comments, as always, appreciated.

[Matt DeReno]

I would like to post links to 2 SNA tools developed at Carnegie Mellon University...

1. ORA: http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/projects/ora/

2. Automap:http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/projects/automap/

Please let me know how to go about their inclusions.

Best regards,

Matt DeReno
CASOS Center

[Vladimir Barash]

I would like to link NodeXL, which can read a variety of formats into an Excel spreadsheet, at: http://nodexl.codeplex.com/

[Chris Cameron]

Don't forget the excellent python package NetworkX from Los Alamos National Lab. It is able to read and write many network formats, it is open-source and can use many kinds of network data.

http://networkx.lanl.gov/

It can produce GraphViz compatible plot files so you need the directed tie NetworkX --> Graphviz

It also imports and exports a variety of formats: http://networkx.lanl.gov/reference/readwrite.html

undirected edge-list to add to graph:
NetworkX Adjacency List
NetworkX Edge List
NetworkX GML
NetworkX Pickle
NetworkX GraphML
NetworkX LEDA
NetworkX YAML
NetworkX SparseGraph6
NetworkX Pajek

[Mark Round]

Vladimir, Chris,

Thanks for the information. I'm in the process of updating the diagram at the moment, an also revisiting the format of the data. Other commitments permitting, these changes should show up within the next few days.

[Clement Levallois]

I'd suggest to include the software GEPHI, which reads a new XML format (GEXF) and can import (AND / OR) export to a bunch of others (GraphML, GDF, CSV and still others).
www.gephi.org

Best,

Clement