Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

February 29, 2012

Graph Databases: Information Silo Busters

In a post about InfiniteGraph 2.1 I found the following:

Other big data solutions all lack one thing, Clark contends. There is no easy way to represent the connection information, the relationships across the different silos of data or different data stores, he says. “That is where Objectivity can provide the enhanced storage for actually helping extract and persist those relationships so you can then ask queries about how things are connected.”

(Brian Clark, vice president, Data Management, Objectivity)

It was the last line of the post but I would have sharpened it and made it the lead slug.

Think about what Clark is saying: Not only can we persist relationship information within a datastore but also generate and persist relationship information between datastores. With no restriction on the nature of the datastores.

Try doing that with a relational database and SQL.

What I find particularly attractive is that persisting relationships across datastores means that we can jump the hurdle of making everyone use a common data model. It can be as common (in the graph) as it needs to be and no more.

Of course I think about this as being particularly suited for topic maps as we can document why we have mapped components of diverse data models to particular points in the graph but what did you expect?

But used robustly, graph databases are going to allow you to perform integration across whatever datastores are available to you, using whatever data models they use, and mapped to whatever data model you like. As others may map your graph database to models they prefer as well.

I think the need for documenting those mappings is one that needs attention sooner rather than later.

BTW, feel free to use the phrase “Graph Databases: Information Silo Busters.” (with or without attribution – I want information silos to fall more than I want personal recognition.)

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