Databases. Which technology to choose? There is a multitude of information out in cyberspace about how different technologies work and which would be better for any given situation.  I’d like to take some time to break down in simple terms, the difference between modeling data with a relational database and comparing to a graph database. I am not including a No-Sql or Document database in this comparison.

Let’s start with a simple scenario.  We have people, who go to a library and interact with books.

 In a relational database, everything is stored in tables (also called entities). A designer would create one table each for people, one for library and one for books. Each table has attributes (properties or columns). In the People table, you would store the name of that person. You would also have to store a unique identifier. There may be two John Smiths, so you would have to have a way to identify which John Smith you are referencing.  This unique identifier (ID) is usually handled by the database automatically, for example the first record is 1, and the next is 2 and so on.