The Era of Smart Data: Graph, RDF and NoSQL DBMS
Database management systems using non-SQL data and querying, especially using graph data such as RDF, are an increasingly popular solution for the storage and retrieval of data. Unlike traditional relational databases, this non-relational or so-called ‘NoSQL’ style of database has seen a surge of popularity over the last few years as large enterprises wrestle with how to capture the most value from their big data stores. Graph database systems take schema flexibility to the next level by using graph structure for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to store and retrieve data via SPARQL and OWL ontologies. Graph database systems include, for example: Ontotext’s GraphDB, Oracle’s RDF Semantic Graph, SYSTAP’s Blazegraph, Franz’s AllegroGraph, OpenLink’s Virtuoso, MarkLogic, and Apache Jena; there are many others. There are also other kinds of NoSQL database systems, such as MongoDB and Apache Cassandra (again, there are many others). Graph data and graph database systems are also known as smart data. Smart data complements traditional relational data and its associated SQL database systems. Smart data technology often helps to integrate data from multiple SQL databases.