A Deep Dive into Graph Databases: The Future of Data Management

Introduction

Graphs occur everywhere in everyday life: your network of friends, the network of roads you drive on, and the supply chain of factories, ships, and roads that brought you the device you’re reading this on. While it might be easy to connect the dots on how most things can be shown as a graph, what makes a database a graph database? That is the question you will have the answer to in this blog post, but to put it simply: a graph consists of nodes, edges, and properties representing the relationships within data.

In this article, we will discuss:

1. What is a graph?

2. What is a graph database?

3. Different types of graph databases.

4. Graph database use cases.

What is a Graph?

A graph is a collection of nodes and edges where the edges describe the relationship between the nodes. Graphs exist across multiple domains including graph theory, analytics, and database models. These three separate entities support each other and allow for connection through the specific abilities of each.

supply chain management example

Graph Database Example

According to Wikipedia, graph theory is:

In mathematics, graph theory is the study of graphs, which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of vertices (also called nodes or points) which are connected by edges (also called links or lines).

In computing, it is considered an abstract data type that is good at representing connections or relations – unlike the tabular data structures of relational database systems, which are very limited in expressing concerns.

Graph analytics is not a new tool but is historically underutilized in data and analytics. Graph analytics is the process of analyzing data stored within a graph database. Data Scientists and Engineers can use a graph database to process nodes and edges to understand the relationship between the data collected. We cover some examples of graph analytics in the use cases section.

Example of Nodes and Edges

A good metaphor for graphs is to think of nodes as circles and edges as lines or arcs. The terms node and vertex are used interchangeably here. Usually, vertices are connected by edges, making up a graph. Vertices graph database don’t have to be connected at all, but they may also be connected with more than one other vertex via multiple edges. You may also find vertices connected to themselves, as shown above.