Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild?

Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by malux85 on Thursday May 20, 2021 @05:02AM (#27218970)

Graph databases are used in many many places. Examining bank transactions, finding the shortest path through state machines, molecular reaction modelling, transactional arbitrage/trading, circuit modelling, fact modelling in AI, threat modelling in cyber security, network routing and large scale analysis, virus and sickness modelling, there’s so many more

These systems usually have specialised on-disk data structures and algorithms (e.g. path finding) that are multiple orders of magnitude faster than the equivalent data stored “Flat” in a column database, this difference in time and space efficiency isn’t “some glorified academic project” - but the concrete difference between practical and impractical

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by jaxk on Thursday May 20, 2021 @06:35AM (#27219478)

yeah, I see these examples a lot so safe to say its niche and used by large banks, feds etc and not everyday businesses?

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by malux85 on Thursday May 20, 2021 @10:29AM (#27221542)

No, because although individually each use case above could be described as niche (maybe) - there’s so many different ones, in so many different industries, there’s clearly a general use case.

I’ve been a developer with 18 years commercial experience now and I’ve seen graph databases in all size businesses as I’ve travelled the world, from 1-2 person startups to huge online casinos, heck, I’m a single person startup and I have two myself, one with 200,000,000 nodes and there’s no way a traditional database could do what that system is doing (I tried with Postgres, HBase on Hadoop, and Cassandra)

Sure they are not as common as traditional DBs, but they are far from niche, that’s why (as you said in your original post) there’s so many products in this space competing - they are actually a thing, they are actually useful, and for some projects, critical.

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by chalcolithic on Sunday May 23, 2021 @04:30AM (#27253323)

What is your graph db of choice? What are the more popular ones in your opinion?

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by jaxk on Thursday May 20, 2021 @11:00AM (#27221986)

yeah but as a novice dev I have never come across a job listing that needed a graph db expertise of any kind, there are tons that need nosql though, along with traditional rdbms of course, why is that?

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by chalcolithic on Sunday May 23, 2021 @04:32AM (#27253331)

Actually upwork seeems to have plenty, and unless I'm mistaken they are all of "(re)write cypher query" kind.

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by itguy1308 on Thursday May 20, 2021 @06:49AM (#27219550)

What do you mean with "everyday businesses"? I would not say that graph databases are niche...

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by thorin on Thursday May 20, 2021 @07:46AM (#27219910)

I wouldn't say they are niche, but many people I work with would model these systems in relational or no sql databases rather than pick a graph database for such a specific use case. With the popularity of microservice approach, this may be changing. Traditionally applications were based around 1 or few single datastores.

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Re:Ask HN: Are graph databases used in the wild? by jaxk on Thursday May 20, 2021 @11:03AM (#27222037)

exactly, seems graph db just help reduce verbosity of sql query if cypher or something else is used.

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