Data Vault & Knowledge Graphs, a Love Story…

Pardon the expressive title, the intent of this article is to marry the two concepts (data vault & knowledge graphs) along their similarities and disparities and present motivations behind using both alongside one another.

To begin with, we will define what each concept is and their motivations. Next, we will explore the underlying technology where each of these concepts perform at their best. Then the similarities and disparities between the two; how data vault can influence and enable knowledge graphs and how knowledge graphs can influence and enable data vault. Finally, we will also discuss how and where the two concepts should be used in tandem.

First up… some definitions!

• Data vault modelling maps business entities, their relationships to other business entities and historically tracks the information state of those entities and relationships. It is designed to be flexible and non-destructive to change and acts as the integration between an enterprise’s software data landscape and analytical value. A data vault model will integrate by business key with a view of supporting the business architecture.
• Knowledge graphs represent a structured representation capturing relationships and entities along with their properties with the goal of studying the relationship between business entities. A…