Mechanisms are provided to implement a relation network visualization and interaction engine that is configured to generate an extended adjacency matrix representation of a relation network. The mechanisms create a relation network data structure, and generate an adjacency matrix graphical representation of the relation network based on analysis of the relation network data structure. The mechanisms extend the adjacency matrix graphical representation by adding an interactive indirect relation glyph, for an indirect relation in the relation network, to the adjacency matrix graphical representation in association with representations of a source entity and a target entity that correspond to the indirect relation, to thereby generate an extended adjacency matrix graphical representation. The mechanisms output the extended adjacency matrix graphical representation in a visual manner on a computing device.