concept property graphs in category graphx

This is an excerpt from Manning's book Spark GraphX in Action. Login to get full access to this book.

3.3.2. RDF graphs vs. property graphs

Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a graph standard first proposed in 1997 by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for the semantic web. It realized a mini-resurgence starting in 2004 with its updated standard called RDFa. Older graph database/processing systems support only RDF triples (subject, predicate, object), whereas newer graph database/processing systems (including GraphX) support property graphs (see figure 3.14).

Figure 3.14. Without properties, RDF graphs get unwieldy, in particular when it comes to edge properties. GraphX supports property graphs, which can contain vertex properties and edge properties without adding a bunch of extra vertices to the base graph.