Prompting the user to make a user-defined Data Flow Diagram (DFD) and outputting the Node names and connections?

Essentially I want to make my program highly dynamic by letting the user say how the nodes connect to eachother. The trend would be left-to-right but can be too complex for pure logical deduction. Here are some diagram examples:

The only outputs I need is the node names and the node they point to. I think this could be useful to many people who are making any network-based software, but I have yet to find a good solution. Thanks!

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

Are you familiar with the graph and network algorithm functionality introduced in MATLAB in release R2015b? I think the digraph, addnode, addedge, and plot functions listed on that page will be of interest and use to you.

[Alonso Trejo-Mora]

Thanks for letting me know, this solves the biggest obstacle I had in terms of getting my program to store the order. As for the user-friendly functionality, I'll try to find a good function with a GUI that can be applied to my code.

[Steven Lord]

Out of curiosity, what kind of functionality would you like such a GUI to have?

[Alonso Trejo-Mora]

To give a little context: My program reads files that contain Female-to-Male pin name changes and interface changes (it essentially tracks the path for starting pins as they change names through a progression of interface board files).

The desired functionality from the diagrams drawn above is for the user to tell the computer "the male pins of type J3 from File B and the male pins of type J4 from File B connect to the female pins of type U2 in File C," and so on. You can see how this could become impossible to "hardcode" and tedious to user-prompt instead of using a GUI.

Things I would have in an ideal world:

A graph of nodes representing each file (thinking linked-list style), where each node contains two arrays: • File's Female identifier(s) [J1, J3, etc.] • File's Male identifier(s) [J4, J1, etc.] • A way to "assign" the male identifiers of one file to the female identifiers in a future file

With the graph approach: I found graph gui online that spits out an Adjacency Matrix for a user-input directional graph, though I cant find a way to get it to store the variable to the workspace even if I tell the function to output it. Also, this helps me tell the computer male to female connections but it's not ideal. This is because unlike normal graphs, the nodes I need have a "Male" end and "Female" end.

I'll draw up what I'm thinking once I get the chance, thanks for hearing me out

Answer 2

[Alonso Trejo-Mora]

Image corresponding to Steven Lord's question.

NOTE: the naming between Male-and Female connections is arbitrary. They could both be J2 or anything else. Within the same file, however, there will not be redundancies (e.g. None where Male and female are both J2).

I know that these structures can be hardcoded using Java (whether matlab accepts them is unclear to me though), but I do not know of a good way to get these connections in a GUI-like way to make it more dynamic.