Let's take a quick look at how we can avoid the complexity mentioned previously in the graph world. In the following figure, you will find the graph model and relational model side by side:
The relational model versus the graph model
On the right-hand side of the image, you will see the three tables in the relational model:
- A customers table with a number of customer records
- An Accounts table with a number of accounts of these customers
- A typical join table that links customers to accounts
What is important here is the implication of this construction--every single time we want to find the accounts of a customer, we need to perform the following:
- Look up the customer by their key in the customer table.
- Join the customer using this key to their accounts.
- Look up the customer's accounts in the accounts...
