Graph Databases - betting the company on it?
graph, neo4j, ruby-on-rails, social-networking
Solution
Michael beat me to the punch, but let me add, answering for Neo4j, and letting others respond about other technologies.
The link below includes a variety of facts about the state of the Neo4j community, product adoption, and the company behind the product:
http://blog.neo4j.org/2013/01/2012-year-in-review-happy-2013-it-looks.html
The link below speaks to this year's roadmap, which among other things will lift the current size limit. The limit is simply a space-performance optimization that was chosen back when price-performance ratios were a little different. We'll do the work this year to increase a few pointer sizes, and release a version with no practical upper limit in the next several months:
http://blog.neo4j.org/2013/01/2013-whats-coming-next-in-neo4j.html
There are production installations with half the Facebook social graph in a Neo4j cluster, on the back of highly active web sites. The only cross-region Amazon database cluster that I'm aware of (for any database management system) is one that's running on Neo4j: 10 instances spread between the U.S., Asia, and Europe. One of the world's largest parcel delivery services does all of its package routing using Neo4j, routing 2000+ packages per second at peak. Decisions are made in real time literally as packages slide down a chute. They went live last Fall and Christmas was able to happen for tens of millions of people. Lots more. This is a sampling.
Welcome to the awesome world of graphs! Whatever solution you end up choosing, we're glad to have you as part of the graph database community.
Philip
Problem
Looking at Neo4j, and the 32 billion relationship limit has me worried (imagine 40 million users who upload 500 photos, have 500 friends, make 500 comments etc and before you know it you are past 32 billion).. So I have some concerns and have to make sure I'm making the best choice on which database to use. Not looking for subjective answers nor debate here - ie. which one is better etc - rather, since I'm betting a startup's future on what graph database is uses, I need to know the risks the different databases present, such as Neo4j not having more than 32billion relationships. Now, several companies have called their graph databases the "leading graph database".. but let's look past the hype -which one has the most financial backing? Which db enjoys a large community support? Which one has a solid company behind it for commercial support? Which one is most likely to be mature enough so if you wanted, you could easily create facebook with minimal effort? It's easy to choose a graph database on technical features or familiarity - but I'm looking for more than that - I want to make sure a few years from the company is still around. I want to make sure I'm not choosing to go with Neo4j based on hype and the momentum it currently (temporarily?) has... And What other graphs can contend with Neo4gj to create a full fledged social network similar to facebook (again, not looking for better, just looking for a solid competitor ). Please don't let this turn into a subjective Neo vs Dex debate - just facts and solids answers please..