Advantages and limitations of graph databases

NoSQL Concepts

Miriam Antona

Software engineer

Advantages - flexibility

• Can change as applications and industries change
• Don't need to define the final final structure in advance
• Can add/delete nodes, properties, and edges

Advantages - performance

• Doesn't need to perform joins
  • Joining can be potentially time-consuming
• Follow edges from node to node
  • Simpler and faster

Advantages - easy representation of the data

• Similar structure to human thinking
  • Graph modeling very intuitive
• Easily visualized
• Facilitates understanding

Advantages - horizontal scalability

• It is possible
• More difficult than in other NoSQL databases
  • Graphs are connected
  • Need to be distributed across multiple machines

Limitations

• Entity properties with extremely large values
  • BLOBs (Binary Large Objects): multimedia objects
  • CLOBs (Character Large Objects): collections of character data
  • Graph databases won't perform well
  • Bad practice
  • Use another database to store that information
• Significant change for developers
  • New data modeling mindset
  • Learn Cypher, Gremlin...

Let's practice!

NoSQL Concepts