Re: Graph datatype addition

On Apr29, 2013, at 21:00 , Atri Sharma <atri(dot)jiit(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> I think we find work arounds or make shifts at the moment if we need
> to use graphs in our database in postgres. If we have a datatype
> itself, with support for commonly used operations built inside the
> type itself, that will greatly simplify user's tasks, and open up a
> whole new avenue of applications for us, such as recommender systems,
> social network analysis, or anything that can be done with graphs.

Usually though, you'd be interested a large graphs which include
information for lots of records (e.g., nodes are individual users,
or products, or whatever). A graph datatype is not well suited for
that, because it'd store each graph as a single value, and updating
the graph would mean rewriting that whole value. If you're e.g. doing
social network analysis, and each new edge between two users requires
you to pull the whole graph from disk, update it, and write it back,
you'll probably hit problems once you reach a few hundred users or
so… Which really isn't a lot for that kind of application.

I'd love to see more support for those kinds of queries in postgres,
(although WITH RECURSIVE already was a *huge* improvement in this
area!). But storing each graph as a graph type would do isn't the
way forward, IMHO.

best regards,
Florian Pflug