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On Big Graph Data, by Roberto V. Zicari, Aug 6, 2012
Titan is a new distributed graph database available in alpha release. It is an open source Apache project maintained and funded by Aurelius. To learn more about it,
Roberto Zicari interviewed Dr. Marko A. Rodriguez and Dr. Matthias Broecheler, cofounders of Aurelius.
RVZ, Q1. What is Titan?
MATTHIAS: Titan is a highly scalable OLTP graph database system optimized for thousands of users concurrently accessing and updating one huge graph.
Q2. Who needs to handle graph-data and why?
MARKO: Much of today's data is composed of a heterogeneous set of "things" (vertices) connected by a heterogeneous set of relationships (edges) - people, events, items, etc. related by knowing, attending, purchasing, etc. The property graph model leveraged by Titan espouses this world view. This world view is not new as the object-oriented community has a similar perspective on data. However, graph-centric data aligns well with the numerous algorithms and statistical techniques developed in both the network science and graph theory communities.
Q3. What are the main technical challenges when storing and processing graphs?
MATTHIAS: At the interface level, Titan strives to strike a balance between simplicity, so that developers can think in terms of graphs and traversals without having to worry about the persistence and efficiency details. This is achieved by both using the Blueprint's API and by extending it with methods that allow developers to give Titan "hints" about the graph data. Titan can then exploit these "hints" to ensure performance at scale.
Read more.