Much has been written about graph databases as a distinct type of database in the last few years and it is easy to forgive in believing the accompanying marketing material warranting differentiation of graph databases from any other database.

So what does that marketing material say and how much should you give credit to?

Graph Databases and Graphs

Graph databases are described as databases that operate over graphs and where relationships between things matter. A graph is a type of structure and the underlying graph of a graph database maps the structure, or schema, of the data stored in the database.

The picture below is a graph model for a seat booking database solution for a cinema. We would use such a schema to book seats to watch a film in a particular session at that cinema. I believe it can be readily said that graph schemas are straight forward to look at.

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