Hierarchy Expansion

MongoDB’s BSON document structure can also store array data types and in order to interpret that data for Panopticon Designer (Desktop), the user has to decide how they want those multi-value fields to be displayed.

If the array field contains a collection of sub documents and each sub document has a like-named field with another collection, this is a flattened hierarchy as stored in MongoDB. As a flattened structure, the data cannot be turned into a meaningful visualization. However, using the hierarchy expansion feature, these sub-document arrays can be recursively turned into individual rows.

To use the hierarchy expansion feature, select Hierarchy Structure in the Structure dropdown box.

This only creates the columns in the Panopticon Designer (Desktop) table. In order to populate the row entries, a Hierarchy Label should be selected as well. This is a text-based identifier that should clearly label a node in a hierarchy.

After clicking OK, a hierarchy expanded data set will display in the sample data table.