Data relationships in a graph

Within a graph, data is represented as a network of individual facts or statements. These statements are made up of two nodes, the data points—often referred to as the subject and object—and their relationship—often called the predicate. When combined they are known as a triple.

For example, you might be interested in capital cities of countries. The fact consists of ‘this city is the capital of this country’—the subject being the city, the predicate being ‘is the capital of’, and the object being the country.

London – is the capital of – England

If you have many of these facts, you can see how they could be connected together. All of the cities can be connected via and ‘is a’ predicate to an object of type ‘City’ that describes the class of object, and likewise the countries can be connected to an object of type ‘Country’. For anyone who isn’t practiced with their geography, this can be a helpful graph of information—particularly for the more obscure regions.

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