ArangoDB v4.x is under development and not released yet.
This documentation is not final and potentially incomplete.
EnterpriseGraphs
EnterpriseGraphs enable you to manage graphs at scale by co-locating edges with their connected nodes
This chapter describes the enterprise-graph module, a specialized version of
SmartGraphs.
It will give a vast performance benefit for all graphs sharded
in an ArangoDB Cluster, reducing network hops substantially.
In terms of querying there is no difference between SmartGraphs and EnterpriseGraphs. For graph querying please refer to AQL Graph Operations and General Graph Functions sections.
Creating and modifying the underlying collections of an EnterpriseGraph are also similar to SmartGraphs. For a detailed API reference, please refer to Enterprise Graphs Management.
See how to migrate
from a general-graph to an enterprise-graph.
How EnterpriseGraphs work
The creation and usage of EnterpriseGraphs are similar to SmartGraphs.
However, the latter require the selection of an appropriate sharding key.
This is known as the smartGraphAttribute, a value that is stored in every node,
which ensures data co-location of all nodes sharing this attribute and their
immediate edges.
EnterpriseGraphs use hash-based sharding similar to General Graphs that
pseudo-randomly distribute nodes across shards, but EnterpriseGraphs ensure that
the adjacent edges of nodes are co-located in the same shard. As a consequence,
you cannot define _key values for edges. You can also not modify the
_from and _to edge attributes because they contain the sharding key which
cannot be changed.
While not as effective as the sharding of SmartGraphs, your data may not have a
suitable smartGraphAttribute. You can use EnterpriseGraphs as the next best
option to get better performance. EnterpriseGraphs can also take advantage of
accidental co-location of nodes on the same DB-Server, which General Graphs cannot.
EnterpriseGraphs using SatelliteCollections
EnterpriseGraphs are capable of using SatelliteCollections within their graph definition. Therefore, edge definitions defined between EnterpriseCollections and SatelliteCollections can be created. As SatelliteCollections (and the edge collections between EnterpriseGraph collections and SatelliteCollections) are globally replicated to each participating DB-Server, (weighted) graph traversal and (k-)shortest path(s) query can partially be executed locally on each DB-Server. This means a larger part of the query can be executed fully local whenever data from the SatelliteCollections is required.