I've looked around, and found some information out there regarding this, including some threads on this site... however, I am wondering if I am the first person to try this with perl and if I really need to go mess around with java script, flash, or just give it up and go with the file explorer look.

Here is my situation:

I'm a support tech (for a suite of complex interrelated network performance products) making a knowledge base that currently has a static flowchart made in SmartDraw (for the auto-image map creation) - that serves as a front-end into a cgi/perl/html script with a tree structure of leaf-pages that is controlled by a flatfile index. I have multiple description fields that can be edited (text-file storage), as well as text tech notes that are dynamically linked to based on "parent" catagory page, pulled from a list of catagory's from the technote header.

Here's the kicker, I allow links to be added from any part of the tree to any other part.... or deleted, as well as adding / deleting "children"... thereby updating the tree structure on the fly... allowing us to collaberate on reverse-engineering our engineering department.

As you can imagine, the whole idea behind this knowledge base if for folks to store data in a catagorical structure, thereby having the structure itself lend to the understanding of the complex components of our products.

Note: My boss is really hooked on the flowchart frontend as a visualization tool for the comples relationships.

Here is my question:

I am desperately trying to find a way to dynamically generate a flowchart based on my index, instead of updating it manually every day. I can easilly see how to do it with a directory structure looking graphical output... CGI::Explorer seems to be a module made just for that. I'm looking for something more like the "familly tree" script outputs I've seen...

Has anyone attempted this? Imagine a dynamically generated, visio/dia like flowchart (each shape a link), based on an index which represents parents/children/links.

The only ideas that I've come up with conceptually is to make a very complex table structure, and to use borders as lines... or maybe try some top-down view hack of the explorer like deals with a lot of gifs...

I tried to explain the situation briefly, but it seems I've failed, however, please let me know if I'm unclear.

Any and all ideas appreciated. Thanks.

-Jeff

Edit by tye, replace PRE tag with P tags

In reply to Dynamic FlowChart / Tree from KB relationship index by muad33b

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