WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND
Instead of showing individual Objects, I would like a graph view that only shows Types and the Object-type relations between them.
Recall that there is an “Object” relation type, which can be restricted to only allow some Types as field inputs. Those are the relations I’m referring to.
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
A graph view populated by nodes that consist of only Types. The connections between them consist of Object-type relations. It wouldn’t really make sense to include stuff like Number and Text fields. Non-default Tag relations might still be alright, since they’re expected to be used only with a few Types; there’d be a node labeled with the Tag relation’s name.a, in that case
Recursive relations may exist in this view (e.g. The “Document” Type may have a “Subdocuments” relation which then accepts other Documents), so there’s going to be self-referential loops in this view.
The edges also show summary info about how many such relations exist between concrete instances of the two Types it connects. There are also visual cues to show if a relation is in disuse — that, or just allow the user to filter which relations are shown based on usage statistics and other criteria.
The view could be called the “Schema/Relations Planner.” I can’t think of a better, less technical name, but that’s what it is.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
I want to:
- be able to clearly see how my Types relate to each other;
- clean up relations that I barely use at all, and;
- find relations that don’t make sense where they are and should be refactored.
There is also the opportunity to create relations between Types straight from the Schema Planner … which makes functional sense from the name, come to think of it. This way, I’m not switching through so many Types’ individual pages just to interrelate them in a way that makes immediate sense to me, and it also gets me into a structural thinking mode to properly assess what I’m dealing with, so it helps resolve my workflow in a way.
RECOMMENDED ALTERNATIVES
Instead of a graph view, it could just be a textual page with the ability to bring up several Types, then gives you the right tools to interrelate those Types in a convenient and comprehensive way.
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
Related: Graph view of object's schema
The image in the linked post just about demonstrates the bare bones of it. Being able to see some usage statistics from that view (without clicking on edges) would also be nice, though I’m not sure if it’d be cluttered in that case.