Managing Large Graphs

The DGML dependency graph feature of Visual Studio 2010 includes some state-of-the-art Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)-based technology for visualizing and navigating large graphs, but I'm seeing customers still push this technology to the limits with some very large code bases. By default, the dependency graph features work best for code bases up to about 50,000 lines. If you need to visualize dependencies in solutions larger than this, use some of the tips and tricks that I take you through in this video.

This includes:

• Garbage collection (2:00)
• Filtering (2:23)
• Limiting scope to selected assemblies (4:47)
• Drilling into specific links (3:30)
• Cut & Paste (5:20)
• Untangling dense graphs using Quick Clusers, Neighborhood Mode and Butterfly mode (6:25)
• Quick Grid mode on cancelled layouts (10:52)
• Removing boring nodes using Find dialog with regular expressions (14:05)
• Finding important nodes using "Hide Unselected" (16:08)
• Splitting huge graphs into separate linked documents (17:02)
• Custom reference attributes (18:23)