Simple Structures For Complex Data: Optimizing Metadata Storage & Retrieval Using Graph Databases

Analyzing and processing the dynamic structure of today’s data represents a challenge for developers which prompts them to explore alternative methods with respect to the stan- dard ones. In this work we will present the benefits and the potential of the novel Graph databases, capable of handling complex data better than the traditional approaches. Rela- tional databases for example, seem to not scale the task in the new emergent challenges. On March 2, 2009, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) found that the NSA had failed to comply with court ordered restrictions on searching "BR metadata," tele- phone business records containing information about American as well as foreign citizens. The NSA claimed that "from a technical standpoint, there was no single person who had a complete technical understanding of the BR FISA system architecture." Motivated by this court sentence, after an accurate simulation of a telephone dataset, we then present an application that, using graph databases, ensures that only a specific number of entries is permitted to be queried. Then, we introduce another feature of this application which allows to perform run time queries designed to modify the dataset in real-time.