Graph Databases Reflect Reality
As a reminder mnai is leading the way in transforming unmanageable company datasets into meaningful data networks to uncover high-value insights. For instance, we have connected all UK companies, company officers and shareholders- a network of close to 100m relationships — to identify fraud and sales opportunities (among lots of other use cases).
When I was very young I was convinced that mirrors were made from a magical substance. I thought it was mined, like gold, flattened and then hung on walls. It reflected reality just sooo brilliantly, thin and clean, easily a top 5 thing for me back then.
Imagine how my world shook when I learned the dull truth — it’s a piece of glass with aluminium attached. Just everyday glass and tin foil. I was shattered.
I hadn’t yet learned critical thinking. I asked no questions, just took the information those heart-meltingly beautiful mirrors gave me and was satisfied.
So it is with ‘truth’; what we perceive to be true and what is actually true. We can get convinced by the former and don’t look for the latter.
These two truths are becoming harder to disentangle, after all, we’re on a one-way train to complexity: more intermediated, more interconnected, more interconfudgabalistic (honestly, Google it). In short: It’s a complex system of complex systems.
So, now we get to the point — what tools do we have to find the truth in an ever more connected and complex environment?
We need something that can mirror our connected and complex world, change when it changes, move like it, and think like it.
Graph databases are that thing. The relationships between things are our first-class citizens. What is connected to what? How do phenomena spread through the network? Who or what has the most influence and how do we track that? Graph databases models can be quickly changed, and mistakes easily corrected.
This is how Google ranks web pages, how the Panama Papers uncovered billions in dirty money, and how police and intelligence services identify threats.
But…this is not how most businesses see the world.
Most have a discrete, linear view that does not helpfully reflect the messy world they operate in.
Does your world look like this…
or like this…
After this sideways introduction, in the next post, we will look at some concrete examples…
(Apologies to anyone who did search out interconfudgabalistic — it isn’t a word. You need to be careful out there, particularly when the term ‘honestly’ is attached).
Mike Oaten, Head of Connected Data, mnAI
