Why Relational databases are losing charm and relevance?
There are two spectrum of opinions, one side feels “every five years there is noise on the demise of relational database systems.” Other side thinks “newer databases are more evolved, catering to changed business demands.?
Let’s explore what’s changing in the database landscape and which new player is taking over the market……or is it all just a hype?
In recent years data leaders are looking beyond relational databases. Managing larger volumes of data isn’t a challenge for them anymore. Their challenge is building and figuring out solutions to generate insights and patterns from their existing data.
If you have a bigger volume of data than your competition, who cares. It’s of no use. Every company is inundated with data. Today’s challenge is beyond managing data. The magic lies in what you can achieve out of those data.
Traditionally companies have heavily relied on relational database systems, but in recent years things are changing rapidly. Along with size, the nature and speed of data has changed dramatically. Today majority of data comes in unstructured or semi-structured format from emails, social media, audio, video, and texts. This is creating a fundamental shift in how companies are dealing with data.
Currently companies are dealing in a hyper connected environment where understanding complex relationships between data points is critical.
#Relationaldatabase can’t keep up with complicated relationships created by variety, and complexity of data. Their schemas make it difficult to add different connections. With RDBMS it’s cumbersome to join the points and read relationships in their data.
Isn’t it funny that Relational databases aren’t very effective at handling “relationships”, of course data relationships. Well, that’s why the technologist in Shakespeare said “What’s in a name” ??
Kidding aside, Relation databases miss the mark when it comes to dealing with hyper connected data, and of course unstructured data is not their forte.
So which new entrant is gaining the confidence of technology leaders?
The new player in data landscape is Graph database. It has solid capabilities to deal with data relationships. In fact, the key difference between Graph and Relational databases is the way relationships between entities are stored. In a graph database, relationships are stored at the individual record level, while a relational database uses table definitions.
Instead of rows and columns, like in a?relational database table, #graphdatabases use nodes to store data entities and edges to keep relationships between entities.
Let’s understand the role of Graph database in real world.
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We all have experienced behind-the-scenes working of Graph database. While you are shopping on Amazon and see the product recommendations “people who bought this item also bought”. When you are on Netflix and see lists of movies for you to watch, new releases and top picks for you.
And right now, on LinkedIn when you can see first and second-degree connections and post recommendations.
This is all happening using recommendation systems powered by graph database. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all use graph databases to understand user’s connections and recommend them with the relevant content.
Seems like Graph databases are limited to social networking and steaming media companies. But no, there is growing demand with financial, manufacturing and supply chains companies.?
Leading financial companies like Bank of America and JP Morgan are using graph?technology to fight financial crimes, deal with cyber-attacks and to handle risk compliance issues.
Even supply chain and manufacturing companies are rapidly adopting to Graph technologies to manage real-time control of inventory and delivery systems. Get?better control of complex manufacturing processes and meet customer demands.
One more area where #graphdatabase outperforms relational database is “dynamic analytics” With dynamic analytics businesses can analyze real time data and respond faster by creating user experience as-it-happens.
Naturally, Graph databases are capitalizing on changed business demands in a huge way, to the point where it seems like Relational databases will be challenged by graph technologies from a market contribution standpoint.
But remember #rdbms rules the database landscape with 75% of market share while Graph DBs are at a nascent 1.3%. It’s a long haul.
No matter how technically impressive Graph databases are, you can’t deny that relational databases are the most popular query tool across businesses. It’s a good choice for records and other transactional data. Even Graph companies know the fact that it’s?hard to shake the position of the behemoth.
I was talking to a solutions architect with a leading Graph database company, what he told me makes complete sense. He said “even though it looks like we are competing with relational databases, on the ground we are not.?It’s not a smart move and we as a product company know this pretty well. Trying to sell against established players like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft isn’t going to work. Clients are deeply invested and accustomed to their data products. We position our products as complimenting to their existing database systems, usually to build new age AI, #analytics and ML capabilities.”