GraphAware is proud to announce the 2.7 release of Hume, our graph-powered insights engine. The release significantly enhances Hume’s knowledge graph visualisation and graph data analysis capabilities. Analysts, data scientists, investigators, and data-savvy business users immediately get the following main benefits:
- Faster identification of the starting points for analysis through configurable search relevance and improved end-user search experience
- Speedup in time to insight thanks to the long-awaited, attribute-based relationship styling
- Increased flexibility for individual analysts brought by automatically computed virtual node and relationship attributes
- Reduction of dead-end investigation paths by preventing the “hairball” problem through configurable double-click actions
- Reduction of clutter through the experimental node and relationship grouping functionality
- Additional opportunities for data enrichment and further processing through the addition of Neo4j Reader component to Orchestra
- Improved user experience thanks to countless, sometimes unnoticeable but very impactful UX improvements
A new look and more customisation
Graph visualisation and exploration is at the core of Hume’s offer for analysts. This release of Hume improves it enormously:
- To maximise the space dedicated to the graph, the side panel is now closable with panel titles rotated to fit vertically.
- Searches and ordering increase the analyst’s productivity by simplifying access to relevant information or options.
- Actions management has been moved to a dedicated panel since they are first-class citizens of Hume’s exploration capabilities. The grouping by scope makes them clearer and better organised.
- The double-click configuration unlocks customisation options. Direct users or managers can decide what the default behaviour is on double-click, thus helping to speed up exploration.
The video illustrates how the new panel behaves and how simple it is to search for and visualise attributes. Furthermore, it shows the rich range of options available for double-click configuration.
The power of enhanced search at your fingertips
In most cases, search is how users start their analysis, bringing to the canvas relevant nodes from which they continue their exploration. The more efficient, effective and flexible it is, the faster and more productive the analysis will be.
To allow search to fulfil all the exploration needs, Hume 2.7 extends its capabilities and customizability in multiple ways:
- It is now possible to specify the relevance of some classes or some attributes. These settings can be done at the perspective level, selecting a specific boost value for the attributes or for all the attributes in a node class.
- From the search bar, just using the keyboard, it is possible to specify the node type where to search or a specific attribute in the nodes. Autocompletion makes the process easy and misspelling-free.
- Multiple search criteria can be combined to further refine the filter.
- Sometimes, the nodes or the relationships returned as a search result are already in the graph currently visualised in the canvas. They are now properly highlighted as new nodes or relationships.
The video shows some examples of how to search by specific attributes or how to change the relevance to customise the results obtained. The example on query combination explains how to specify multiple criteria.
See the invisible
Hume’s goal is to empower knowledge workers with tools that make analysis simple and intuitive.
Graphs are particularly powerful because they make patterns immediately visible. Unlike dashboards or tables, insights can often be recognised at a glance — this is where graphs truly excel.
Building on this, Hume extends visual capabilities beyond node styling to include link styling.
Relationships can now be customised based on attribute values. For example, link thickness can reflect a “weight” property. These visual cues make the graph easier to read and interpret.
To support this, Hume introduces computed attributes.
Computed attributes are virtual properties that can be added to both nodes and relationships after the data has been created. They are generated using custom queries and provide access to contextual information needed for advanced styling.
A common use case is styling, but computed attributes are also valuable in their own right. In many cases, these values are difficult to persist in the graph — particularly when they depend on a structure that changes frequently.
In these situations, computed attributes make it possible to surface insights that would otherwise be difficult to see.
For those who want to experiment
Starting with this release, we’re introducing a new approach: highlighting experimental features in our major releases.
The goal is to spark curiosity around functionality that may evolve into fully fledged features in Hume. More importantly, we want your feedback. Your input helps shape what these features become.
Hume is a complex ecosystem, and developing new capabilities — especially in more advanced areas — requires extensive product discovery. Not every idea makes it to production. Some concepts that initially seem promising turn out to be too complex or unintuitive in practice.
With that in mind, we’re excited to introduce an experimental feature we believe has strong long-term potential: grouping.
Grouping allows users to organise nodes — and, by extension, their relationships — based on shared attributes or classes.
Watch the video below to see how powerful this capability can be.
Further relevant improvements
Alongside major updates, each release also includes a range of improvements, bug fixes, and minor enhancements. Some of the key updates in this release include:
Configurable retry for Neo4j Writer
You can now define how many times the Neo4j Writer component in Orchestra retries a transaction that fails due to concurrency issues.
Editable system settings from the UI
Previously, changing system settings required editing a properties file and restarting the entire system. Now, the most critical settings can be updated directly within the application — no restart required.
Ecosystem variables
Many configuration fields often require the same values to be entered repeatedly. Ecosystem Variables allow you to define these values once and reuse them across configurations, reducing repetition and simplifying management.
Lazy loading for large properties
Some graph attributes contain large amounts of text, which can slow down the property panel. Hume 2.7 introduces the ability to mark such attributes in the schema. These properties are now loaded on demand: a short snippet is shown by default, and the full value is only loaded when requested.
Neo4j reader
A new dedicated component for reading from Neo4j has been introduced. When used as a workflow source, it replaces three previous components: a timer, a Cypher query processor, and the Neo4j Writer. It operates in a read-only session, ensuring that no changes can be made to the graph — making it a safer option for data retrieval.
Monitoring Orchestra (Prometheus + Grafana)
Orchestra processes millions of messages per hour and plays a critical role in transforming and managing data. Monitoring its performance is essential. We have tested integration with Prometheus and Grafana to enable comprehensive monitoring and visualisation of a running Orchestra instance. The results of this work are presented here.
