CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gremlingraph-databasesamazon-neptune
Rabbott
Rabbott

Reputation: 4332

Storing data on edges of GraphDB

It's being proposed that we store a data about a relationship between two vertices on the edge between them. The idea would be that these two vertices are related and there are user level pieces of information that are looking to be stored in graph. The best example I can think of would be a Book, and a Reader, and the Reader can store cliff notes on the edges for retrieval later on.

Is this common practice? It seems to me that we should minimize the amount of data living in edges and that a vast majority of GraphDB data be derived data, rather than using it as an actual data store. Given that its in memory, what happens when it goes down? (We're using Neptune so.. there are technically backups).

Sorry if the question is a bit vague, but I'm not sure else how to ask. I've googled around looking for best practices and its all pretty generic data related to the concepts and theories of graph db.

An additional question, is it common practice to expose the gremlin API directly to users, or should there always be a GraphQL (or other) API in front of it?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 509

Answers (1)

bechbd
bechbd

Reputation: 6341

Without too much additional detail it is hard to provide exact modeling advice , but in general one of the advantages of using a graph databases is that edges are first class citizens and allow for properties on edges. A common use case for this would be something like PERSON - purchases -> Product where you might have a purchase_date on the purchases edge to represent the date of the purchase, as someone might buy the same thing multiple times.

I am not sure what exactly you mean by that a vast majority of GraphDB data be derived data as you can use graphs to derive and infer data/relationships based on the connections but they do fully support storing data in them as well.

Given that its in memory, what happens when it goes down? - Amazon Neptune (and most other DBS) use a buffer cache to store some data in memory, but that data is also persisted to disk, so if the instance goes down, there is no problem with recovering it from the durable storage.

An additional question, is it common practice to expose the gremlin API directly to users, or should there always be a GraphQL (or other) API in front of it? - Just as with any database, I would not recommend exposing the Gremlin API directly to consumers, as doing so comes with a whole host of potential security risks. Generally, the underlying data store of any application should be transparent to the users. They should be interacting with an interface like REST/GraphQL that is designed to answer business related questions and not really know or care that there is a graph database backing those requests.

Upvotes: 3

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