Graph Database
A graph database is a database that uses the graph structure
to store, represent, process and query data.
The Power of Graph Database
As we are living in a highly connected world, the importance of finding values from the connection between objects and relationships is increasing every day. There was a time that the ‘size’ of data took center stage, but today, it just isn’t enough for most businesses; the key to leveraging the true value of data to revolutionize businesses should be discovered in ‘relationships’ between data.
Elements of Graph Database
Graph is a collection of nodes (vertices) and links (edges). A node represents an entity and an edge represents a relationship between the two nodes. Graph technology focuses on the relationship between data objects to discover valuable knowledge and insights. This is why graph database is essential to graph technology as it serves as a platform for storing and managing connected data for the identification of graph-oriented values.
Vertex
Edge
Graph
What is Vertex? (Node)
A unit to express one object within a domain such as a row of RDBMS table or document of Document DB.
What is Edge? (Link, Relationship)
A unit to express the relationship between objects within a domain such as Foreign Key of RDBMS table or linked id of Document DB.
With more than 30 billion IoT devices expected to be in service by 2020 (*Gartner), Big data from
connected IoT devices has become a key concern. Graph database provides the best performance for processing
and managing large-scale connected data (IoT, electrical grid, Blockchain, etc.).
Benefits of Graph Database
Faster, Efficient Query
When you query certain information on graph database, you traverse only a certain part of a graph to get what you need and not every single node and link in the graph. This enables much more efficient, faster querying than relational database which often does full-scan including unnecessary rows.
Simple, Intuitive Data Model
If we try to fit our diverse real-world into a foursquare table structure, we often face difficulties in the right understanding of data even after going through a lot of efforts. Graph model is so much alike to the real-world model, so it provides a simple and intuitive representation of the business process which is much easier to understand and of course, to visualize.
Responsive, Right-Now Data Management
Graph database allows adjusting data in near real-time with super flexibility as your needs and environments change. Graph database requires much less effort to integrate hetero data as it simply modifies nodes, links, or their properties. Often described as schema-less, the availability of different types of schema assures in-the-moment fixes.