[criticaltinker]

Databases in 2030: SQL DB finally succumbs to Graph DB as #1

Does anyone else feel like a caveman when modeling a many to many relationship in a normalized schema, and then querying via SQL?

I’m surprised graph DBs aren’t more popular for this reason alone. Maybe it’s a far fetched dream, but perhaps a graph frontend can be slapped onto the Postgres backend.

[apavlo]

> Databases in 2030: SQL DB finally succumbs to Graph DB as #1

Graph databases will not overtake relational databases in 2030 by marketshare.

Bookmark this comment. Reach out to me in 2030. If I'm wrong, I will replace my official CMU photo with one of me wearing a shirt that says "Graph Databases Are #1". I will use that photo until I retire, get fired, or a former student stabs me.

[hodgesrm]

Count me in on Andy's side of the bet. The most useful features of graph databases will likely be subsumed into RDBMS just as features from JSON stores and object stores were before them.

For example...One of the hits against RDBMS is that the structure is supposedly "rigid." That's simply not the case in many RDBMS, such as those using column storage. Adding columns in databases like ClickHouse is a trivial metadata operation. This means that many problems that Neo4j solves can be addressed in a more general-purpose RDBMS, because you can add columns easily to track relationships. It's pretty easy to envision other improvements to access methods to make searches more efficient.

I don't mean to undercut in any way the innovation of graph databases. It's just that the relational model is (a) extremely general and (b) can be extended.

[cam0]

Not a fan of graph dbs? Surprised the $325m round for Neo4j didn't make your funding paragraph.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/17/neo4j-series-f/

[PhoenixReborn]

Have you looked at Hasura for the second question (graph frontend + relational backend)? That's basically GraphQL on top of Postgres.

As for the first question - I've tried using Neo4j and ArangoDB for relatively large-scale graph querying (1-2TB of data) and both couldn't hold a candle to Postgres or MySQL in terms of query performance for cost. Neo requires you to store most of your data in memory and Arango isn't great for cross-shard querying.

Unless there's some major new graph DB that comes out in the next few years I would still bet on relational being dominant in 2030.

[jbergens]

Have you tried TigerGraph?

They say that they scale well. I have not tried any graphdb for prod work yet.

[PDoyle]

Nonsense. Graph databases pre-date SQL. The relational model was created to overcome the limitations of graph databases.

[srcreigh]

Relational data schemas are a graph

[eurasiantiger]

And exactly for that reason, graph DBs can be more intuitive to work with: relational DBMSs generally don’t support any kind of graph operations or traversal queries.

[option_greek]

You can always use an ORM which provides better usability for developers. End of the day rdbms model is suited for a wide variety of workloads and there are several other factors in play while choosing a good db including eco system, cloud vendor support, migrations, performance etc.

[chishaku]

Which db is that?

Either way, that’s not happening.

[will_gottschalk]

I’ll take Hasura for 500