Representing history in graph-oriented NoSQL databases: A versioning system

Abstract

Graph databases are taking more and more importance, especially for social networking. For instance, organizations can implement graph databases to represent and query data such as Person1 is CEO of Organization1. NoSQL graph databases (e.g., Neo4j) have been designed to deal with such data. However, managing history is not yet possible in an easy manner while being critical in many applications. Tracking changes is indeed one of the main functionalities in databases (especially Relational BD) and should not be forsaken in NoSQL graph DB. For instance, queries like 'list all the people who have been CEO of Organization1' or 'list all the functions People1 has been taken in his career' are important. In this paper, we thus propose a novel representation of historical graph data and tools to implement it as a plug-in of existing NoSQL graph systems. © 2013 IEEE.