Graph database

How it is used

Neo4j and Amazon Neptune are well-known examples, with query languages such as Cypher and Gremlin. They suit social networks, recommendation engines, fraud detection and network maps, where questions are about connections rather than totals.

Example sentences

1. The fraud team uses a graph database to find accounts that share devices and addresses.

2. A graph database answers 'who else bought this?' much faster than ten SQL joins.

Common collocations

• graph database
• nodes and relationships
• graph query
• Cypher query

Related terms

• NoSQLA broad group of databases that do not use the classic table-and-SQL model, storing data as documents, key-value pairs, wide columns or graphs instead.
• document databaseA NoSQL database that stores each item as a self-contained document, usually in a JSON-like format, so related data can be kept together without fixed tables.
• key-value storeThe simplest kind of NoSQL database, which saves each value under a unique key and finds it again very quickly by that key.
• joinA SQL operation that combines rows from two or more tables using a related column, such as a customer ID. As a verb, to join tables means to combine them this way.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• graph database · Software Engineering

More terms: NoSQL Databases

• eventual consistency
• CAP theorem
• collection
• in-memory database