A graph database is a form of NoSQL database that stores data using graph structures, hence the name. Typically, a graph database uses edges, nodes, and properties rather than documents and tables to represent and store data. This makes it easier to retrieve data with one operation in most cases.
Graph databases are derived from the mathematical graph theory, where a graph represents data sets using edges, nodes, and properties. Here’s a detailed description of each:
- Nodes – also known as points- are entities or instances of data representing the objects to be tracked, like accounts, people, or locations.
- Edges – these are the essential concepts in a graph database. Edges represent the relationships between nodes. Edge connections’ direction can be one-way (unidirectional) or two-way (bidirectional).
- Properties – they represent the descriptive information related to nodes. In certain cases, edges can also have properties.
Thus, nodes with descriptive properties create relationships that are represented by edges.
Graph databases give us a theoretical view of data more closely connected to the real world. With that, modeling complex connections also becomes easier because relationships between data points have an equal importance value, just like the data.
Graph databases have become increasingly popular in recent years thanks to their ability to provide fast, efficient querying of large, complex datasets. They are particularly useful for storing and querying complex, interconnected data, such as social networks, recommendation engines, and fraud detection systems.
Types of Graph Database
The two common graph database models are EDF graphs and property graphs. These two models consist of collection points (vertices) and the connection between the vertices. RDF graphs emphasize data integration, while property graphs focus on querying and analytics. Let’s look at these two models in detail.
RDF Graphs
RDF (Resource Description Framework) graphs follow a set of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards designed to represent statements. This makes RDF graphs ideal for representing mater data and complex metadata.
Generally, RDF graphs are used to link data, knowledge graphs, and data integration. They can provide rich semantics and inferencing data or represent complex concepts in a domain.
In RDF graphs, nodes represent any form of resources, like concepts, places, or people. Edges represent connections between resources and take the form of subject-predicate-object statements.
For instance, “John studies at Harvard” would be represented as a triple with John as the subject, studies as the predicate, and Harvard as the object. Typically, RDF graphs are stored in triple stores—these are specialized databases designed to manage and store resource distribution framework data.
One of the main benefits of using RDF graphs is that they provide a flexible and extensible way of representing data. RDF graphs can be easily combined with other RDF graphs, and the data can be easily queried using the SPARQL query language.
RDF graphs make it easier to publish data in standard formats with well-defined semantics. This, in turn, allows seamless information exchange. RDF graphs have been widely adopted by pharmaceutical companies, healthcare organizations, and government statistics agencies.
Property Graphs
These are used to represent relationships between data. Additionally, property graphs allow data and query analytics based on these relationships.
Property graphs have vertices, which have detailed information about a subject. Also, they have edges, which represent the relationship between the vertices. The edges and vertices contain attributes known as properties with which they are connected.
Property graphs are often used for applications that require querying and manipulating complex and interconnected data, such as recommendation engines, fraud detection systems, and social networks. Typically, property graphs are used in a wide range of sectors and industries, like manufacturing, finance, retail, and public safety.
Uses of Graph Databases
Fraud Detection
Graph databases can help to detect fraudulent activities. This is because they allow the representation and analysis of complex relationships between entities, which are often key aspects of fraudulent behavior.
Typically, fraudulent activities are characterized by hidden or indirect relationships between entities. This can be difficult to detect using traditional databases or data analysis techniques. However, graph databases can easily represent these relationships, allowing fraud analysts to quickly identify patterns and connections that may indicate fraudulent activity.
For instance, a graph database can be used to identify clusters of suspicious activity that involve multiple accounts, transactions, or IP addresses and to trace the relationships between these entities to identify potential fraudsters. Additionally, graph databases can be used to detect anomalies and outliers in large datasets, which may be indicative of fraudulent behavior.
By using graph databases for fraud detection, analysts can quickly identify complex relationships and patterns in data that might indicate fraudulent activity. This enables them to detect and prevent fraudulent behavior more effectively than they would be able to with traditional databases or analysis methods.
Master Data Management
Master Data Management (MDM) involves managing the critical data assets of an organization, such as customer and product data. This helps to ensure that they are accurate, consistent, and complete across all systems and applications. Graph databases can be very useful in MDM because they are designed to handle and analyze complex relationships between entities, which are the primary characteristics of master data.
Graph databases allow organizations to represent and manage their master data in a more flexible and dynamic way than traditional MDM solutions. With a graph database, entities such as customers, products, and locations can be represented as nodes, and their relationships can be represented as edges between those nodes.
Because of this, organizations can identify and manage relationships between entities more easily, which can be critical for accurate and effective MDM. For example, a graph database can identify relationships between customers, products, and locations that traditional MDM solutions might miss, such as which customers are associated with which products or locations.
Additionally, graph databases can be used to identify and manage data quality issues in master data. For example, a graph database can identify duplicate or inconsistent data across multiple systems and trace the source of those issues to specific nodes and edges in the graph.
Managing Network and IT Operations
A graph database can help you connect your monitoring tools across your IT and network operations. This can help you gain key performance insights, in addition, to better testing vulnerabilities, conducting capacity planning, and troubleshooting solutions. A graph database can also help you to better prepare your company with impact analysis centered on user analysis.
Identity and Access Management
It’s easy to identify and manage to change products, roles, groups, and authorizations using a graph database. These interrelations tend to be complex. But, a graph database can help you track the data and control access for your native graph. The interconnected nature of graph databases can also help you support an innate support management relationship. And you can do this faster and more accurately while ensuring high efficiency across your business.
Recommendation Engines
A graph database allows one to store a customer’s interests and purchase history. Now, depending on the analysis of what you can see regarding the relationship between the variables, you can offer a recommendation engine that gives ideas of what the user is more likely to prefer or like.
For instance, you can conclude with a high degree of accuracy that a client might prefer products similar to those bought by another client if they have the same purchasing behavior or history.
What Does the Future Hold Graph Databases?
Graph databases continue to evolve as big data, and computing power continues to increase. It’s becoming increasingly clear that most organizations will adopt graph databases as the standard tool for analyzing complex data relationships.
As organizations and businesses continue stretching the limits of big data and analysis, the ability to get insights in more complex ways makes graph databases vital for today’s requirements and future success.
