Software for Dynamic Transaction/Network Diagrams?

Paul Carver asks: "I work on a large front end system that communicates via many different transactions to a large number of back end and legacy systems. I'm compiling a list of all the transactions, where in our system they originate or terminate, and what external system they communicate with. I'm wondering if there is software that could transform this list into a graphical representation in a way that minimizes the octopus-like complexity?" Interesting question. Such a program sounds like it could be very useful. So does something like this exist? (More Below)

Paul continues: "I know I could draw it by hand in Visio, but due to the number of systems and transactions involved I'd like to feed the whole list or a filtered list into a program that would automatically position the nodes and lines.

The diagram that I've started on my whiteboard consists of a large circle in the middle that is divided up into the various parts of our system and lots of little circles representing all the other systems surrounding the large cirle. The lines are already squigling and crossing all over and I haven't even put in more than a quarter of the transactions. "

PC Board software

[unitron]

Once you mentioned lines crossing the first thing I thought of was schematics and (multi-layer)circuit boards. Is there any open source board design stuff out there that could be modified to give you a 3 dimensions represented in 2 picture of your octopus farm?

Re:Use Case Diagram

[dthusma]

hmm....why dont you just just graphviz, from AT&T.

It does everything you asked for and its input
file is almost too easy. Geez, everyone makes the issue of directed graphs harder than it has to be. Being the lazy slob I am, I am happy to have let AT&T done the work and I'll just take the glory ....
http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/

BTW, I work for AT&T wireless, but I have nothing to do with graphviz, except the fact that I have been using it since before I worked for AT&T wireless.

Re:Use Case Diagram

[Paul Carver]

Thanks, that works pretty well, although I haven't been able to get it to draw my system in the center with all the other systems surrounding it. I guess the next question is how to translate the output.

I guess I need to dig through the Ghostscript documentation to figure out how to get Postscript into a web viewable format.