Updated Database Landscape map – June 2013 by Matthew Aslett.
I appreciate all the work that went into the creation of the map but even in a larger size (see Matthew’s post), I find it difficult to use.
Or perhaps that’s part of the problem, I don’t know what use it was intended to serve?
If I understand the legend, then “search” isn’t found in the relational or grid/cache zones. Which I am sure would come as a surprise to the many vendors and products in those zones.
Moreover, the ordering of entries along each colored line isn’t clear. Taking graph databases for example, they are listed from top to bottom:
- Neo4j
- DEX
- FlockDB
- GrapheneDB
- AffinityDB
- Trinity
- Titan
- Giraph
- Allegrograph
- HypergraphDB
- InfiniteGraph
But GrapheneDB is Neo4j as a service. So shouldn’t they be together?
I have included links to all the listed graph databases in case you can see a pattern that I am missing.
BTW, GraphLab, in May of 2013, raised $6.75M for further development of GraphLab (GraphLab – Next Generation [Johnny Come Lately VCs]) and GraphChi, a project at GraphLab, were both omitted from this list.
Are there other graph databases that are missing?
How would you present this information differently? What ordering would you use? What other details would you want to have accessible?
A while back I posted a comment about graphs being a great structure to represent real world data but a poor one for presenting that data. I think your post today highlights my issues with graphs for presentation (at least so far). There is no reference system to provide context and orientation. Or, in this example, it is even worse because there is an artificial reference system that implies relationships that do not exist or are contradictory with the facts. The map above might not be as compact but it would be more useful if it was layed out so at least one axis provided a consistent reference system: Maybe first release date? Compare what you can learn from the above graph and how quickly you can learn it with this one http://www.totalprograms.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/linuxdistrotimeline.jpg
A topic map presentation tool where the user could select the reference system for displaying the graph would be awesome. Do you know of anything that would support that?
Comment by clemp — June 11, 2013 @ 10:20 pm
That’s a great example!
I won’t try to link to the image but see GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline for a more recent GNU/Linux distribution timeline (Oct, 2012).
Much more complex than the 2007 version in your comment.
But it underlines the important of your question about controlling the reference system for a display of a graph. Ontopia, as I recall, allows for filtering by topic type but I am not sure that is the same thing as reference system.
That is filtering by type or other characteristics is good, but specifying axes for display or type of graph or imposing metrics for non-metric values, would be better.
Comment by Patrick Durusau — June 12, 2013 @ 9:27 am