Mapping the Maze: Exploring Issues with Graph Databases

Meelzolder
15:10 — 15:35
Björn Brala

Björn Brala

CTO, SWIS | Core maintainer JSON:API | Board member, Dutch Drupal Association

Drupal’s issue queue is powerful—but not always friendly. Particularly when navigating sprawling meta issues or tracking related child issues across time, it’s easy to get lost in the web. What if we could visualize the whole thing?

Drupal Issue Explorer is a tool I built to tackle this. It turns the issue queue into an interactive, browsable graph using Neo4j, letting contributors explore issue relationships, find forgotten threads, and better manage their focus.

This talk dives into the motivation, architecture, and future of this tool—and how it might help us all contribute more effectively and confidently.

“The Issue of Issues”

  • Large meta issues often have dozens of related or child issues scattered across months or years.
  • Contributors (myself included) tend to lose track of long-term or orphaned issues—either because of scale, complexity, or simple forgetfulness.
  • Current tools don’t offer a clear way to see the web of relationships between issues.

Introducting; Drupal Issue Explorer

A clickable, interactive graph of Drupal.org issues—specifically open issues and all their connected relations.

  • Explore the “web” of related issues with ease.
  • Find forgotten follow-ups or children of large meta issues
  • Identify orphan issues
  • Quickly evaluate what’s connected to what—visually.