How does NebulaGraph Database stand out from other graph databases

Graph databases offer the best solution for projects related to data relationships, a key feature that has amplified their worth for organizations. From the tech behemoths of today to small and medium businesses, as well as governmental bodies and NGOs, all sizes of organizations are currently dedicating resources to explore the opportunities that graph databases can unlock.

NebulaGraph, a top graph database solution now adopted by big brands, stands out from the other graph databases in many ways that you’ll discover shortly.

Defining NebulaGraph

NebulaGraph is an open-source, distributed and native graph database that can accommodate graphs with billions of nodes and trillions of connections.

It serves query results with millisecond-latency – thanks to the distributed architecture.

No other database is capable of processing  graphs with trillions of edges and vertices.

How NebulaGraph stands out from other graph databases

These are the top qualities that separate NebulaGraph from the others in the market today:

1. Deployment

You can deploy NebulaGraph anywhere you want:

  • Cloud (Public, Private or Hybrid)
  • On-premise: A good option if you need to keep your data and applications in-house.
  • Windows: Makes it easy to use NebulaGraph with existing Windows app.
  • macOS: A good choice if you use macOS as your primary development platform.

This flexibility makes NebulaGraph a good choice for a wide range of applications, from small development projects to large-scale production system.

2. Phenomenal data processing speeds

A top quality that all data scientist or analysts seek in a database system is the processing speed – and NebulaGraph excels here by miles compared to other databases.

Thanks to a powerful native graph engine, the QPS and TPS speeds are extremely fast with millisecond level latency.

More on speed:

  • The traversals are super efficient and the memory usage is properly optimized.
  • NebulaGraph is also highly concurrent, which means it can handle multiple queries at the same time.

These are the kind of capabilities you need to process and analyze enormous amounts of data at lightning speed.

3. Query efficiency

Another quality that is most critical is query efficiency and NebulaGraph thrives here as well thanks to nGQL – Nebula’s query language. nGQL will efficiently transform complex SQL queries into brief graph queries.

nGQL is also compatible with openCypher and ISO-GQL, two other popular graph query languages. This makes the learning process much easier for those who are already familiar with these languages.

4. Horizontal scalability

The ability to add as many nodes or services to the cluster without interfering with performance is elusive among many graph databases. But NebulaGraph is free of this challenge as it embraces horizontal scalability.

Even better, you need not change the existing nodes’ configuration in order to scale. You just need to ensure that your bandwidth is enough and you’re good to scale.

Meituan, one of the big companies that have adopted NebulaGraph, made the switch after performing intense comparisons. They found that the open-source editions of the majority, including some of the common names in the industry, can only support single-node deployment.

What is the problem with this? Well it means that you cannot scale the storage service horizontally and therefore it’s impossible to store huge volumes of knowledge graph data.

When Meituan researched further and tested NebulaGraph alongside Dgraph and HugeGraph, the results were clear: For graph storage engine, NebulaGraph outdid the others in batch data import speed, real-time write performance, and n-hop query performance. Check out the full analysis.

5. High availability

NebulaGraph delivers exceptional resilience.

The snapshot functionality, for instance, allows you to capture a specific instance at any given time and utilize these snapshots to reinstate data from that precise moment.

This means that in case of a disaster, the snapshots will help you recover without losing any data. When an instance fails, it’s first removed from the cluster and a new one is created from the snapshot to replace the failed one. To make it even easier, this entire workflow is 100% automated and transparent.

6. Production-fit

Yes. NebulaGraph is perfectly ready for use in the production environment. This is why big companies such as Tencent are comfortable putting it into use in real-time environments.

From recommendation systems to fraud detection, financial risk control to knowledge graphs, NebulaGraph is indeed built for demanding real-time applications. Check out the companies already using NebulaGraph.

More outstanding items about NebulaGraph:

  • Vendor lock-in? No
  • Integrates with popular programming languages? Yes
  • Which architecture? Shared-nothing
  • Open source? Yes (under Apache 2.0)
  • Deployable in your local computer? Yes
  • Visualization tools available? Yes
  • Secure? Yes

NebulaGraph consists of three core services:

  • Graph Service
  • Storage Service
  • Meta Service

It’s also packed with powerful ecosystem tools, including::

  • Nebula Studio: A visualization tool (browser based) that manages NebulaGraph.
  • Nebula Dashboard: Monitors the statuses of machines and services in NebulaGraph clusters.
  • Nebula Explorer: Browser based visualization tool used alongside the NebulaGraph Core to visualize interactions with graph data.

There are more ecosystem tools for different purposes, such as Nebula Algorithm and Nebula Flink Connector, among many more.

Concluding remarks

Many organizations are sitting on vast data that could easily unlock their next big income opportunity or even prevent the next disaster. With NebulaGraph, you’ll no longer be at a loss of what lies in that data.