AWS, Google, Neo4j, Oracle. These were just some of the vendors represented in the W3C workshop on web standardization for graph data, and what transcribed is bound to boost adoption of the hottest segment in data management: Graph.

Getting a number of vendors to talk to each other, let alone align, is no easy feat. Adding academics and researchers does not necessarily make things easier. Now try adding to the mix a fragmented community and long-standing unresolved issues, and you get the picture of why graph data standardization has not been achieved so far.

This, however, seems about to change, and that’s good news for everyone. We have been closely following the rise of graph databases for the past couple of years. The stars seem to be finally aligning for graph, and the Gartners and Forresters of the world are picking up on this, too.

After being included in Gartner’s Hype Cycle in August 2018, Gartner also included Graph as trend No. 5 for in Top 10 Data and Analytics Technology Trends for 2019. Graphs shine in modeling a number of domains, and are the best option to leverage connected data. So why did it take so long to reach the mainstream? To quote fellow ZDNet contributor and Ovum analyst Tony Baer:

Bingo. Standards — de facto or otherwise. The technology has been making progress, to the point where now using graph at scale is feasible. But going for a piece of the incumbents pie without a way to interoperate can be challenging. Just ask the NoSQL crowd, which ended up largely adopting SQL. So this is where W3C comes in..

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