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

Getting Started with InfiniteGraph

From the post:

Applications and devices are generating a flood of data that is increasingly dense, highly interconnected and generally unstructured. Social Media is an obvious example where massive amounts of complex data, such as videos, photos and voice recordings are created daily, but there are many other domains where this applies. Markets such as Healthcare, Security, Telecom and Finance are also facing the pain of managing complex, interconnected and real-time information to stay competitive and maintain performance, security, business intelligence and ROI opportunities. .

This type of data of highly-connected entities, some are referring to as the future “Internet of Things”, is not easily managed using a traditional relational databases; emerging technologies and especially graph databases are rising to address these natural graph problems. Using an enterprise-ready, distributed graph database that is complementary to existing architectures, such as InfiniteGraph™, enables organizations to easily store, manage and search the connections and relationships within data and perform rapid analysis in real-time. InfiniteGraph is a distributed, scalable, high-performance graph database that supports developers and companies seeking to identify and utilize the relationships and connections in massive data sets. InfiniteGraph reduces the time needed to discover these connections from days using standard SQL technologies to a matter of seconds.

Given the explosion of data all around us and the increasing need for solutions that can discover and extract value from the relationships within that data, we have developed this comprehensive Software Reviewer’s Guide to help you get started with InfiniteGraph 3.1.

InfiniteGraph 3.1 Software Reviewer’s Guide

This guide takes you step by step from installing InfiniteGraph to navigating your very own graph.

You can download InfiniteGraph 3.1 for free at http://www.objectivity.com/downloads/

The guide is a bit short (sixteen (16) pages) but it should get you started.

I need to install RHEL 4 or 5 64 Bit on a VM before I can try the guide.

I may as well setup a VM for Windows 7 at the same time. So I can copy-n-paste to and from my main system (Ubuntu).

InfiniteGraph 3.1 Features & Capabilities

From the webpage:

• Faster Path Finding Provides dramatically improved search results when finding paths between two known objects by leveraging a two-way path finding algorithm.
• Ingest Enhancements InfiniteGraph 3.1 offers up to 25% improved ingest performance over previous versions.
• Visualizer Improvements The InfiniteGraph Visualizer provides users with additional ease-of-use and quick start functionality for visualizing and navigating the graph.
• Storing Graph Views and Navigation Policy Chains Navigation policies, which customize the behavior of a navigation query, and graph views, which define a subset of a graph database for a navigation query, can now be saved in your graph database for later reuse.
• Unlimited nodes and edges free for 60 days.

When your graph database scales into trillions of nodes, all you need are the facts to get attention.

InfiniteGraph Tutorial: Getting Started With Flight Plan

From the post:

Now that you have downloaded Objectivity’s free version of InfiniteGraph, get started with this step by step tutorial using the Flight Plan application to find the fastest and most cost-effective air travel routes available, one of many free applications provided on our InfiniteGraph Developer Wiki site. Download your free version of InfiniteGraph by visiting http://www.Objectivity.com and follow us on Twitter for the latest updates @InfiniteGraph and get started on building your next generation application today!

The video tutorial illustrates the use of InfiniteGraph but isn’t very accurate in terms of air travel.

I say that because Atlanta was not show as a node on the graph.

“To get to Hell you have to connect through Atlanta.” 😉

Objectivity by Danny Bickson.

Danny has located one of the funniest “connect the dot” videos and a more serious one on InfiniteGraph, a distributed graph database.

Both videos are from Objectivity, maker of InfiniteGraph.

Danny mentions the full version of InfiniteGraph is “…rather expensive.”

Danny must not get out much.

A winning sports team (baseball, football, soccer), a successful business or effective government agency are expensive.

If you want to brag to the server at McDonald’s how cheap your IT costs are, that’s your choice as well.

Sometimes cheapness is its own reward.

Taking a Look at Version 2.1 of Objectivity’s InfiniteGraph

Paul Williams writes:

InfiniteGraph is a distributed graph database application developed by the California-based company, Objectivity. Companies focused on the relationships within their data make up the primary market for InfiniteGraph. The database is known for its ability to find connections inside large datasets, as well as its robust performance and easy scalability.

InfiniteGraph uses a unique load-based pricing model that allows interested parties to try the software, including full database development, essentially free of charge. Two pricing options exist for companies deciding to fully deploy InfiniteGraph. The first option is “pay as you go,” which sports a run-time usage-based pricing model. Companies with large or classified applications can take advantage of a site-wide license option.

Those interested in using the free demo version of InfiniteGraph need to either have a Java compiler combined with some skill using a command line, or an installed IDE such as Eclipse. Database model development in InfiniteGraph requires at least some basic familiarity with the Java language, considering models and relationships (vertices and edges in InfiniteGraph nomenclature) are defined as Java classes. Once a database is compiled, the InfiniteGraph Visualizer app (included with package) allows for graph navigation and data browsing.

Objectivity might benefit from providing a pre-compiled database with the InfiniteGraph download package, so interested parties can investigate the Visualizer app and the software’s data mining capabilities without the need of a Java compiler and/or having to engage their development staff.

Just going off of the review for the moment, I think having a common navigation of data and metadata is a good thing. That is offset by the rather unnatural load a graph database and search for a node before there is a display.

I think I understand the reasoning for the search for a node first before displaying but it is counter-intuitive, where counter-intuitive = burden on user. Better to provide for (and use) a default node that is displayed upon load. That way “load” produces some action the user can see. And offer the user the ability to pick another “default” node that loads automatically when the graph is loaded.

It sounds like the documentation could be better integrated into the application (and not left on the vendor’s website).

Comments or suggestions on strong/weak points to look for with InfiniteGraph?

Developer Contest: Win Apple Stuff!

From the website:

Build a cool software application, web or mobile service around social, game and/or location-based networks, using InfiniteGraph to traverse the objects and relationships in your data. You could win up to $12,000 worth of Apple products, gear and tech!

Presentation and code due 30 September 2011.

What objects and relationships are in your data?

InfiniteGraph Steps Out Of Beta To Help Companies Identify Deep Relationships In Large Data Sets

From the article:

Working with these kind of large enterprises requires support for billions of data points, and so InfiniteGraph has built a system to enable scaling and big data capacity, with realtime functionality. Today, InfiniteGraph is expanding its reach to businesses and developers looking to mine their data stores for complex relationships, be they enterprise apps targeting SMBs, SMEs themselves, or Fortune 500 companies.

But the important thing to point out about InfiniteGraph’s commercial release (the system has been being developed in beta over the last year) is that it doesn’t require developers to re-engineer their databases from scratch to benefit from the technology. Developers can simply use the platform’s dedicated graph API to leverage InfiniteGraph’s relationshop mining on top of their existing data. It also offers a high-scale database management system, which is a nice bonus.

Other features of note in InfiniteGraph’s commercial release include parallel data loading and accelerated ingest, meaning that developers can import and continuously feed apps with data from multiple input streams more speedily. The graph database also allows developers to choose from different indexing options that suit their company’s specific needs (from automatic to manual), as well as enabling devs to view, verify, and test data models in customizable approaches. (emphasis added)

Sounds like topic map navigation of information doesn’t it?

Check it out: http://www.infinitegraph.com

Connecting the dots in big data

From the post:

Join us Tuesday August 16, 2011 (11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET), for a webinar with InfiniteGraph and DBTA (Database Trends and Applications), where we’ll be giving an introduction to InfiniteGraph, and speaking about connecting the dots to find meaning in big data.

Big Data problems are quickly presenting themselves in almost every area of computing from Social Network Analysis to File Processing. Many technologies, such as those in the NoSQL space were developed in response to the limitations of current storage systems as an effective mechanism to deal with these mountains of data. And much of that data is interconnected in ways that, when organized properly, gives interesting and often valuable information.

InfiniteGraph, the distributed and scalable graph database, was designed specifically to traverse connections and provide the framework for a new set of products built to provide real-time business decision support and relationship analytics. This presentation examines the technology behind InfiniteGraph and explores a couple of common use cases involving very large scale graph processing.