On Graph Computing by Marko A. Rodriguez.
Marko writes elegantly about graphs and I was about to put this down as another graph advocacy post. Interesting but graph followers have heard this story before.
But I do read the materials I cite and Marko proceeds to define three separate graphs, software, discussion and concept. Each of which has some vertexes in common with one or both of the others.
Then he has this section:
A Multi-Domain Graph
The three previous scenarios (software, discussion, and concept) are representations of real-world systems (e.g. GitHub, Google Groups, and Wikipedia). These seemingly disparate models can be seamlessly integrated into a single atomic graph structure by means of shared vertices. For instance, in the associated diagram, Gremlin is a Titan dependency, Titan is developed by Matthias, and Matthias writes messages on Aurelius’ mailing list (software merges with discussion). Next, Blueprints is a Titan dependency and Titan is tagged graph (software merges with concept). The dotted lines identify other such cross-domain linkages that demonstrate how a universal model is created when vertices are shared across domains. The integrated, universal model can be subjected to processes that provide richer (perhaps, more intelligent) services than what any individual model could provide alone.
Shared vertices sounds a lot like merging in the topic map sense to me.
It isn’t clear from the post what requirements may or may not exist for vertices to be “shared.”
Or how you would state the requirements for sharing vertices?
Or how to treat edges that become duplicates when separate vertices they connect now become the same vertices?
If “shared vertices” support what we call merging in topic maps, perhaps there are graph installations waiting to wake up as topic maps.