Introduction

Introduction to Ruruki - In-Memory Directed Property Graph

What is Ruruki? Well the technical meaning is “it is any tool used to extract snails from rocks”.

So ruruki is a in-memory directed property graph database tool used for building complicated graphs of anything.

Ruruki is super useful for

  • Temporary lightweight graph database. Sometimes you do not want to depend on a heavy backend that requires complicated software like Java. Or you do not have root or admin access on the server you want to run the database on. With ruruki, you can install it in a python virtualenv and be up and running in no time.
  • Proof of concept. Ruruki is super great for demonstrating a proof of concept with little resources, effort, and hassle.

My idea behind using a graph database is because everything is connected in some shape or form, no matter what it is. You can apply it to things like

  • Linking actors -> movies -> directors.
  • Linking networks, social or computer.
  • Linking people to business structures, hierarchy, or responsibilities.
  • Navigation.
  • Mapping which snails climb over which rocks, or tools used for extraction, and so on.
  • And the list goes on, and on, and on.

You just need to change your mindset on how data is linked together, represented, and related. Like Newton’s third law “For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action”, in terms of a graph with relationships, if one vertex/node is affected, there will be an impact on another node somewhere in the graph. For example, if the CEO is hit by a asteroid, who in the business are affected.

There are many similar projects/libraries out there that do the exact same as ruruki, but I decided to do my own graph library for the following reasons

  • Other libraries lacked documentation.
  • Code was hard and complicated to read and follow.
  • Others are too big and complex for the job that I needed to do.
  • And lastly, I wanted to learn more about graph databases and decided writing a graph database library was the best way to wrap my head around it, and why not?

Contributing

If you would like to contribute, below are some guidelines.

  • PEP8 (pylint)
  • Documentation should be done on the interfaces if possible to keep it consistent.
  • Unit-tests covering 100% of the code.

Versioning

Ruruki uses the Semantic Versioning scheme.

Summary

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, increment the:

  • MAJOR version when you make incompatible API changes,
  • MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards-compatible manner, and
  • PATCH version when you make backwards-compatible bug fixes.
  • Additional labels for pre-release and build metadata are available as extensions to the MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH format.

Functionality still being worked on

  • Traversing algorithms.
  • Query language.
  • Extensions, for example interacting with Neo4j.
  • Persistence.
  • Channels for publishing and subscribing.

Demo

To see an online demo of ruruki-eye follow the following link http://www.ruruki.com.


Build and Testing Status

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