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Comment by lokimedes | Hacker News Reader

Having just spent the better part of two weeks integrating Apache Age for Graph data, just to realize the project is stale and a mess, don’t take this list on face value.

Now hoping for better results with DGraph, but it seems that graph databases are living a precarious existence.

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If I may ask, what type of use cases are there for which a graph database is well suited?

I could imagine there to be a few (that I can't think of and haven't seen). I have seen graph databases used where they didn't make sense though.

Ours is speculative too. In our case, we a building knowledge graphs for individuals where the schema depends on the person and their needs. We also hope that the relationships between data is where the value lies, rather than in the nodes which consist of ingested data. Arguably, the structure can easily be captured with a NoSQL DB or even a relational database. The precarious life of Graph databases is likely due to this - once a schema is established, why would you choose a proprietary datastore?

I wonder what's the catch with Dgraph? Why not chose it above Neo4j? I'm asking because the graph db projects I've been involved in has all used Neo4j and it would be nice to know of a good alternative.

I want it to be as free as possible, neo4j only let’s you run a single database in non-Enterprise mode. We are building a consumer product, where the database is embedded and not centralized in a cloud, so my focus is perhaps different from most. Both neo4j and dgraph comes with additional non-compete clauses, but DGraph’s work for our use case.

Subjectively I’d prefer neo4j. I have been following the company since its inception.

Haaaa same here for apache age. Can you elaborate a little please

The original sponsor of the project just withdrew all resources, the state of the existing codebase is far from mature, the client I tried (python) was really shaky and the lidt goes on. As for the precarious life of graph database companies. DGraph also went though being sold recently, and OrientDB that I also liked, as acquired by SAP, only to be abandoned. Neo4j has stood its time, but the licensing doesn’t fit our needs.

What did you decide on in the end ?

Came here to say this. Last time I checked, Apache Age was wildly inferior to Neo4j. So technically, it does exist and has right to be on the list, but I wouldn't recommend it for serious workloads.

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