network visualization linux

[Nisa Bakkalbasi]

I'd like to make a comment on R's sna package and memory problems for 
clarification. The memory problems I encountered are not related to 
plotting a large network or visualizing network data, but it was 
related to computing one metric only; that is "betweenness."  This 
issue has been discussed at the recent ASIST meeting and colleagues 
offered alternative approaches.

Nisa
------------------------
Nisa Bakkalbasi
Electronic Collections Librarian
Yale University Library
130 Wall Street, P.O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT  06520-8240
Phone: (203) 436-2851  |  Fax: (203) 432-8527

At 03:39 PM 11/14/2006, Elijah Wright wrote:

>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>We've used R's sna package locally to generate lots (and lots, and 
>lots, and lots...) of graph plots.  It works well, particularly for 
>work with data that may not conform to people's initial expectations 
>of what relations may be...
>
>However... it is sometimes a bit memory-hungry.  :)  You are correct 
>in asserting that you will need quite a bit of memory to plot a 
>large network - I've used numerous 16GB and 32GB machines running 
>Sun's Solaris to plot absurdly-sized networks with what I would call 
>a good degree of success.
>
>All of the standard tricks for working with large matrices work 
>quite well with R-sna.  [In effect, there's a real payoff for 
>properly trimming or partitioning your data as early in the analysis 
>process as possible...] Getting to know the other R packages that 
>deal with matrix-oriented data is also highly recommended, for those 
>who want to make serious use of 'sna'.  Several of the more useful 
>tools are not actually *in* the sna package, but found inside other 
>toolkits that are packaged for R.
>
>
>A few of Katy Borner's students have simply run Pajek under Wine; 
>that seems to work well enough.  I don't think I've seen anyone run 
>UCINET under Wine, but I suppose that should also be possible.
>
>--elijah
>
>
>On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Thomas Krichel wrote:
>
>>Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:36:27 -0600
>>From: Thomas Krichel <krichel at OPENLIB.ORG>
>>Reply-To: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics
>>     <SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU>
>>To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
>>Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] network visualization linux
>>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>>
>>  Frank Havemann writes
>>
>>>I recommend the sna-package of R:
>>>http://www.r-project.org/
>>
>>  I have had problems with sna and had to abandon it to
>>  calculate my 4k+ author network paths. I kept running into
>>  memory problems even on my HP Proliant 8 processor box
>>  with close to 4G of memory. I ended up having to write
>>  my own software to do the calculations. I have not used its
>>  vizualization features.
>>
>>  But that was last year. Maybe this is fixed now.
>>
>>
>>
>>  Cheers,
>>
>>  Thomas Krichel                             mailto:krichel at openlib.org
>>                                        http://openlib.org/home/krichel
>>                                    RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
>>                                                skype id: thomaskrichel