What is a Graph Database?
Graph databases help developers build software, web and mobile applications that answer questions that may include "How am I connected to Kevin Bacon?", "Where's the nearest Starbucks?" or "What are the cheapest non-stop, roundtrip flights I can get between California and New York, leaving at 8am Tuesday, and returning by 6pm Friday (and which haven't already been booked in the last few milliseconds by over 4 million other people who need to travel those days as well)?"
Graph databases can help improve intelligence, predictive analytics, social network analysis, and decision and process management - which all involve highly complex relationships. Facebook, LinkedIn and Google are all talking about the value derived from "walking" (traversing) the social and professional graphs - and most of their revenues come from this deeper analysis of all the data they collect everyday.
So, what is a graph database, exactly?
Definitions:
"A graph database... uses graph structures with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store information."
"A graph data structure consists of a finite (and possibly mutable) set of ordered pairs, called edges or arcs, of certain entities called nodes or vertices. As in mathematics, an edge (x,y) is said to point or go from x to y. The nodes may be part of the graph structure, or may be external entities represented by integer indices or references. A graph data structure may also associate to each edge some edge value, such as a symbolic label or a numeric attribute (cost, capacity, length, etc.)."
"Compared with relational databases, graph databases are often faster for associative data sets, and map more directly to the structure of object-oriented applications. They can scale more naturally to large data sets as they do not typically require expensive join operations. As they depend less on a rigid schema, they are more suitable to manage ad-hoc and changing data with evolving schemas."
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_(data_structure)
When should you use a graph database?
If your data contains a lot of many-to-many relationships, if recursive self-joins are too costly or limiting to your application and scaling needs, and/or your primary objective is quickly finding connections, patterns and relationships between the objects within lots of data, you will find graph databases, and particularly InfiniteGraph, superior to all other technologies - including relational databases, key-value, column or document databases.
How does InfiniteGraph compare to other graph databases?
InfiniteGraph has been specifically designed to help developers "connect the dots" in big data, in real-time. Some graph products are focused on transient in-memory graph processing, while others were designed around a central-server paradigm that only works in environments where velocity and volume, performance and scalability are not really a requirement. InfiniteGraph allows you to query live data, even if it's distributed across countless thousands of servers, and get answers back right now. This is why we are unique.
InfiniteGraph is also built on a mature database core that allows it to scale out far beyond the capabilities of most publicly available data technologies today.
Developers may also use this proven, distributed graph database, free! Download our free community edition today, and upgrade at any time.
Download, develop and deploy on Infinitegraph, FREE!
InfiniteGraph is a commercial product with license and pricing options suited to the diverse breadth of new venture, enterprise and government customer use-cases with which we have extensive experience. But we also wanted to be sure new startups and individuals could access this technology as well, and at no cost. Use the links below to download InfiniteGraph and to review our available developer resources - and let us know if you have any questions!
- Download, develop and deploy with InfiniteGraph, FREE!
- Developer resources:
- Core API Manual
- Developer Wiki (Getting started and code examples)
- Developer Forum (Google Group)
- Our Blog (Latest news and announcements)
- @infinitegraph (Follow us on Twitter!)
