by Angela Guess
ReadWriteWeb recently reported on five graph databases to consider, noting, “Of the major categories of NoSQL databases – document-oriented databases, key-value stores and graph databases – we’ve given the least attention to graph databases on this blog. That’s a shame, because as many have pointed out it may become the most significant category.”
The article continues, “Graph databases apply graph theory to the storage of information about the relationships between entries. The relationships between people in social networks is the most obvious example. The relationships between items and attributes in recommendation engines is another. Yes, it has been noted by many that it’s ironic that relational databases aren’t good for storing relationship data. Adam Wiggins from Heroku has a lucid explanation of why that is here. Short version: among other things, relationship queries in RDBSes can be complex, slow and unpredictable. Since graph databases are designed for this sort of thing, the queries are more reliable.”
The article goes on to discuss five commercially available graph databases: Neo4j, FlockDB, AllegroGraph, GraphDB, and InfiniteGraph. See the full article for descriptions of each.
photo credit: openlibrary.org
