On the multi-objective optimization aided drawing of connectors for graphs related to business process management

Abstract

A problem of drawing aesthetically looking graphs is considered. We focus on graphs related to management of business processes. Vertices of a graph are visualized as rectangles (flow objects), and edges are visualized as rectangular connectors (sequence flow). A particular problem of aesthetic drawing is considered where location of vertices is fixed, and the lines representing the edges should be drawn. The latter problem is restated as a graphs oriented multi-objective combinatorial optimization problem. The generally recognized criteria of aesthetic presentation, such as the general length of lines, the number of crossings, and the number of bends, are considered as the objectives to be minimized. The attitude of the potential users of the supposed algorithms towards the relative importance of the considered criteria is elicited by a psychological experiment. The elicited information is used in the development of domain-specific multi-objective optimization algorithms. We propose for that problem a version of the metaheuristics of ant colony optimization. The efficiency is evaluated experimentally using randomized test problems of different complexityTaikomosios informatikos katedraVilniaus universitetasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta