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Empty States Explained

Moire has three distinct empty states, each with a different cause and a different recovery path. Knowing which one you are looking at makes it much easier to get back on track.

1. No results from traversal

When it appears: You followed a relationship (via Jump via strip or Relationships Browser) and the resulting set is empty.

What it means: None of the entities in your source set have the relationship you traversed, or the relationship targets nothing that exists in the current graph. This is a data condition, not an error.

What it looks like: An empty card grid, no facet sidebar, a message such as "No entities found via [relationship name]."

How to recover:

  • Press Back to return to the source set.
  • Try a different relationship from the Jump via strip.
  • Check the Relationships Browser — low coverage relationships (Subjects = 1 or 2) are more likely to produce sparse or empty results.

2. No results from filter combination

When it appears: You applied one or more facet filters and the combination produces zero matching entities.

What it means: No entity in the current set satisfies all of the active filters simultaneously. The filters are individually valid — each one has matching entities — but together they are too restrictive.

What it looks like: An empty card grid with the facet sidebar still visible, and a set of helpful suggestions: "Remove 'female' → 2 results. Remove 'SE' → 1 result." The active filters are shown as chips at the top of the sidebar.

How to recover:

  • Click one of the suggestions to remove that specific filter.
  • Click Clear all filters to remove all filters at once and return to the full unfiltered set.
  • Reconsider the filter combination: the greyed-out values in the facet sidebar told you beforehand which combinations were impossible — this state appears when you have bypassed that signal by adding filters across groups where one group's options became greyed out after applying the other.

3. Empty graph or introspection failure

When it appears: You enter a graph from the Graphs Browser and the Types Browser shows no types, or the Set view is completely empty despite no filters.

What it means: Either the graph genuinely contains no data, or Moire's introspection queries found nothing it could work with. This can happen if:

  • The graph uses non-standard label predicates not recognised by introspection.
  • The graph contains only blank nodes with no typed resources.
  • The endpoint returned an error during introspection.
  • The named graph is empty in the database.

What it looks like: The Types Browser shows a single message such as "No types found in this graph" or "Introspection returned no results." There is no type list and no way to browse by type.

How to recover:

  • Return to the Graphs Browser and try a different graph.
  • Check that the endpoint URL is correct and the database is running.
  • If you are the administrator of the database, verify that the graph contains typed, labelled resources.
  • If you are using an unsupported database format, see Database types and compatibility.

The difference between states 1 and 2

The clearest distinction: in state 1 (no results from traversal), there are no filters active and the facet sidebar is absent. In state 2 (no results from filter combination), the facet sidebar is visible with your active filters shown as chips at the top. If you see the sidebar, you are in state 2 and the fix is to remove a filter. If you do not see the sidebar, you are in state 1 and the fix is to go Back.