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Graph Databases as a Replacement to Relational Databases.
Graph Databases have been in use for quite some time now in scenarios such as Social Network, Knowledge Graphs, Recommendation Engines & more
While offering us with
- Easily Supported Queries
- Explicitly Detailed Relationships &
- Adaptability
It still has failed to appear as a popular choice to customers and researchers due to its lacking from a few benchmarks it has yet to reach :
- A Standardized Query Language &
- Mainstream Support
[1]
| Criteria | RDBMS | Object-oriented database | Graph database(NoSql database) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data storage | Data are organized in the form of rows and columns since RDBMS does not store relationships, it requires less space. | Stores data as objects and the methods to use it as well, therefore, needs higher space in comparison to RDBMS. | Graph data is kept in store files, each of which contains data for a specific part of the graph, such as nodes, relationships, labels, and properties |
| Flexibility: adaptability to change | Changing the table design may require a complete rebuild. Can be altered once the database is deployed however can take significantly more time than the graph database. | New objects can easily be constructed from existing objects. | Allows the addition of new nodes and relationship without compromising the existing network |
| Query language | Standard query language (SQL) | Exist a standard language but hardly implemented | No standard query language yet |
| Query Performance | Performs well for simple, structured data but low performance for data with many many-to-many relationships. | No join is required as objects can be accessed by using pointers hence faster performance | Performs exceptionally well for traversal queries, highly interconnected data, deep and complex queries. |
| Integrity constraints: Rule that defines the set of consistent database states or changes of state or both. | There are four types of integrity constraints: Domain Constraint, Entity Integrity constraints, Referential Integrity Constraint, Key Constraint | Consistency constraints have not been fully implemented. Provides only a limited number of features for integrity constraints | Integrity constraints support is still under development in a graph database |
| Maturity and level of support: how thoroughly tested it is | Development of RBMS leads back to 1974 making it one of the oldest and reliable DBMS. | Development is still going on therefore a sufficient number of Programmers and Database Administrators are available for OODBMS. | Development of graph database boomed in 1998 however it is still not widely adopted. |
| Ease of programming | The common language makes transitioning between implementation easier | It is direct and extensive support to OO programming. | Every Graph database have their own language and own API making transitioning between graphs databases laborious |
| Security | contains extensive support for ACL-based security, built-in multi-user support | most of the Object-Oriented Databases do not support the authorization | Contains some access control list (ACL) security mechanism but lack support for multiuser environments(both handled in application level) |
| Scalability | Since the Relational Data model encompasses a fixed number of Sql operations, it is difficult to extend the ability of Relational model operation.. | It provides full support to advance applications. A set of processes can be extended easily | Functionality can be extended easily by using API and plugins. |
[2][3][4]
From above we can conclude that the choice of databases depends on the type of data we have on hand. If our data is quite simple and structured then a Relational Database is enough however to deal with highly interrelated data, a Graph database would be a wise choice. A graph database is highly efficient for deep and complex analysis. Whereas for handling the complex graphical & hypermedia data and advanced applications, an Object-Oriented Database System can be an alternative to traditional database
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Graham Pearson.graph-databases-replace-rdbms-technologies. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/graph-databases-replace-rdbms-technologies-graham-pearson
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Angles, R., A Comparison of Current Graph Database Models,2012 IEEE 28th International Conference on Data Engineering Workshops, IEEE, 2012. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261076480_A_Comparison_of_Current_Graph_Database_Models
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Vicknair, C.; Macias, M.; Zhao, Z.; Nan, X.; Chen, Y. & Wilkins, D. A comparison of a graph database and a relational database Proceedings of the 48th Annual Southeast Regional Conference on - ACM SE '10, ACM Press, 2010. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220996559_A_comparison_of_a_graph_database_and_a_relational_database_A_data_provenance_perspective
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Aziz, T.; Haq, E.-u. & Muhammad, D., Performance-based Comparison between RDBMS and OODBMS International Journal of Computer Applications, Foundation of Computer Science, 2018, 180, 42-46. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323218317_Performance_based_Comparison_between_RDBMS_and_OODBMS