4 ms·

I've got a lot of background in RDF graph stores. It depends a lot on your usage, but I think for your typical web app, you'd be better off using a Postgres in

I've got a lot of background in RDF graph stores. It depends a lot on your usage, but I think for your typical web app, you'd be better off using a Postgres install, and making use of fancier features like WITH RECURSIVE as necessary. Graph stores often miss out on features like guaranteed relational integrity and guaranteed constraints, which I find invaluable for safe application development in the face of concurrent updates. Graph stores are typically much slower for repetitive data that fits cleanly into a relational model. This isn't to say they're not useful - for more irregular data they're a fantastic fit - it's just that very irregularly structured data isn't the common case. Of course, you can always use two different stores - much like many sites do with a separate lucene/elasticsearch index for text search - but your graphing needs must be relatively componentised for that to work well.

webmaven 12y ago
Which ORMs support WITH RECURSIVE?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  You don't really need any special ORM support -- even if you are using an ORM -- if you use appropriate views.
  - webmaven 12y ago
    Hmm. I guess what I'm getting at is that I typically start building a web app by writing model objects that get turned into db schemas by the ORM (in Python, this is usually the Django ORM or SQLAlchemy), and the ORM turns attribute access into joins (either eagerly or lazily). So an ORM that usefully interpreted model subclassing etc. and created self-joining tables and could query the resulting model using RECURSIVELY WITH as appropriate would be a real boon.
JPKab 12y ago
Curious: What RDF triple stores have you used, and in what kind of application? I was looking into using Stardog for a metadata repository I was building, but we ended up (probably unwisely) bastardizing Postgres into a bunch of self-join heirarchies.
- AlisdairO 12y ago
  The ones I've spent most time with were Jena/TDB, Virtuoso, 3store, along with a couple of proprietary engines. BigOWLIM is also a strong contender in the space. I've used them in the context of both object storage and semantic web data storage. My experience is that if you don't need constraints/enforced relational integrity, RDF stores make for really simple/easy object storage. There's definitely a performance tradeoff, though - depends on what you need, really!
malkia 12y ago
SQLite added CTE (WITH RECURSIVE) recently - http://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html http://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html

webmaven 12y ago

Which ORMs support WITH RECURSIVE?

dragonwriter 12y ago
You don't really need any special ORM support -- even if you are using an ORM -- if you use appropriate views.
- webmaven 12y ago
  Hmm. I guess what I'm getting at is that I typically start building a web app by writing model objects that get turned into db schemas by the ORM (in Python, this is usually the Django ORM or SQLAlchemy), and the ORM turns attribute access into joins (either eagerly or lazily). So an ORM that usefully interpreted model subclassing etc. and created self-joining tables and could query the resulting model using RECURSIVELY WITH as appropriate would be a real boon.

JPKab 12y ago

Curious: What RDF triple stores have you used, and in what kind of application? I was looking into using Stardog for a metadata repository I was building, but we ended up (probably unwisely) bastardizing Postgres into a bunch of self-join heirarchies.

AlisdairO 12y ago
The ones I've spent most time with were Jena/TDB, Virtuoso, 3store, along with a couple of proprietary engines. BigOWLIM is also a strong contender in the space. I've used them in the context of both object storage and semantic web data storage. My experience is that if you don't need constraints/enforced relational integrity, RDF stores make for really simple/easy object storage. There's definitely a performance tradeoff, though - depends on what you need, really!

malkia 12y ago

SQLite added CTE (WITH RECURSIVE) recently - http://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html http://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html