I’m looking for either free/open source software, file format, or other lightweight solution, that allows me to express dependencies between arbitrary things. It should then let me see who is dependent on what.

For instance, I want to start recording which accounts I have with different providers. I would like to map out which knows my different email addresses, phone numbers etc. If I change my phone number or email, or move house, this would let me keep track of what to update.

But that’s just an example, ideally I want to support arbitrary dependencies between anything.

I’m currently inclined to use graphviz. However, that’s very visualisation-centric. I would like a way to map out these dependencies in an arbitrary way and then generate graphs as one out of many byproducts.

Example of how this could work in my head:

phone1: +447123456789
phone2: +447987654321
email1: ambitiousslab1@example.org
email2: ambitiousslab2@example.org
address: 1 Example Street, UK, EX4 4PL

bank:
 - email1
 - phone2
 - address

electricity-provider:
 - address
 - email2

credit-card-company:
 - address
 - phone1
 - email1

Then, I could generate graphs with graph-dependencies email1 or graph-dependencies bank. Or, I could say find-dependencies email and that would print bank, credit-card-company.

Is anyone aware of such a tool, or solved this problem in a different way? Bonus points if it’s packaged already for Debian.

  • owenfromcanada
    2·
    1 month ago

    Graphviz would have been my first suggestion. What other types of outputs are you looking for?

    My second thought would be some sort of database software. LibreOffice has a MS Access equivalent (Base) where you could keep a table for each type of data, then express relationships. If you’re already comfortable with SQL it might work well, but otherwise might be overkill (though you could get just about any output you’d like from it).

    • ambitiousslab@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      What other types of outputs are you looking for?

      I think the main outputs I’d like are:

      • Given a “thing”, show me what is dependent on that thing (find-dependers email1 - printing bank, credit-card-company)
      • Given a service provider, show me what things it is dependent on (find-dependencies electricity-provider - printing address, email2)
      • Graph the dependencies of a thing or service provider (graph-dependencies email1 - outputting a graph with bank and credit-card-company pointing to it)

      My second thought would be some sort of database software.

      I agree, a database would be a good fit for these relationships. A bit of investment up front, but the schema should be very simple.

      Graphviz would have been my first suggestion.

      My main worry with graphviz was that I thought I would be stuck with a big graph of everything and unable to filter.

      But, now I’ve found gvpr, and I can see that arbitrarily complex filtering is supported.

      I’m thinking for this use case at least, I should be able to build a big dot file and then have some gvpr scripts that generate graphs just for the dependencies I’m interested in. I should be able to hook into gvpr to do the terminal output too.

      So, long story short, I think I’ll give graphviz a go, and if that fails, a database with some scripts to generate the dot files on the fly. Thank you!

      • owenfromcanada
        2·
        1 month ago

        Awesome!

        For what it’s worth, I got “fancy” with graphviz a while ago. One of the things it can output is SVGs, which can be used in a web browser for interactivity. For example, I set up one graph to highlight all the branches that are connected to a selected node, and I put links to navigate between different graphs. So there’s quite a bit possible there.