SQL Graph Revealed (Mala Mahadevan)

Join us for the fourth session of the year, where we once again have two sessions.

Agenda

• 5:00pm - 5:10pm: Welcome and messages
• 5:10pm - 5:25pm: Lightning session (Chris Hyde)
• 5:25pm - 5:30pm: Break
• 5:30pm - 6:30pm: Feature session (Mala Mahadevan)
• 6:30pm - 6:45pm: Q & A

SQL Graph Revealed

‘Graph data’ is normally used to describe data that is highly interconnected. Transportation routes, social media friends or connections, organizational charts, genealogical charts, product and customer data, electrical grids and pipelines… the scenarios where you can find them are endless. The most common way graph data is modeled in the relational world is by using many-many-relationships, but querying such structures can be very painful and expensive in terms of time and computing power. Modeling it the graph way instead allows for efficient querying, detection of associations and patterns, performing affinity analysis, and adding business value in a variety of different ways.

There are dedicated graph databases that do this, such as Neo4j, but what if most of your data is in a relational engine already? What if you want to keep the gains of a relational engine such as security, ACID properties, and high availability and still, do some graph modeling? SQL Server 2016+ supports graph data modeling as well. In this talk on SQL Graph Revealed we will learn about origins of graph theory, components of graph data, and advantages of modeling relationships using graph capabilities of SQL Server.

About the speaker

Mala Mahadevan is a senior database professional with over 20 years of experience working with data, primarily in SQL Server and related technologies. She has been volunteering with the SQL Server community for the past 15 years, and is also a recipient of the PASSion award for being an outstanding volunteer. She is a featured blogger on sqlservercentral.com and also blogs frequently at curiousaboutdata.com. She is active on twitter as @sqlmal.

The Warlock Of Graph-Table Mountain

When I was a child I was obsessed with the Fighting Fantasy series of gamebooks, as well as other similar series like Choose Your Own Adventure. Thanks to the SQL Graph feature that was introduced in SQL Server 2017, I was able to write an entire game engine to simulate these books, and it took me less than ten minutes to do so! Please join me for this light-hearted introduction to SQL Graph Database to find out how I did it.

About the speaker

Chris Hyde is an independent SQL Server BI and DBA consultant based in Albuquerque, NM, and is the leader of the Albuquerque SQL local user group. He is a part of the Friends of Redgate program and was named in the Idera ACE class of 2018. He loves loud music and cricket, but not usually at the same time.