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Graph Database

Graph Database is a database that uses graph structures. Ok, let me explain it more. A graph is made up of nodes, edges, and properties, which represent data. Nodes represent entities such as persons or businesses or any other object to be tracked. An edge is a relation between two nodes. Each node can have more than one relations. Property is a relevant information about the node. A database that makes use of such structures, is referred to as Graph Database.

So, what are the advantages of Graph Database?

It stores the data about nodes using edges and properties along with the record itself. This allows applications to retrieve the data much faster as compared to the relational database. It reduces the complexity of traditional “join” statements required in the relational database as data is already linked using edges and properties. Thus, it also improves the performance of the overall database and application as well.

 

Graph Database PropertyGraph
Pictorial representation of Graph Database – Property Graph (Source: Wikipedia)
You can find a good comparison of Graph Database and Relational Database here.

The underlying implementation of Graph Databases may vary. Some may use the relational engine and store the “graph” data in a separate table. Others may use Key-value store (like NoSQL) or document database for storage. As a result, to reap the benefits of the new structure a separate query language is required and one can’t use standard SQL for that. Some of the available query languages are Gremlin, SPARQL, and Cypher. Note that GraphQL is not the query language that is used for Graph Databases.

Graph Database is good for highly connected data such as social networks, or recommendations in e-commerce. E.g. A user of social networking site – represented by Node –  can have a membership with various groups and can have several friends. Each one of those friends, in turn, would have similar connections – relationships – represented by Edges. There would be attributes like birthdates, college etc – represented by Properties.

Related Links

Related Keywords

GraphQL, Relational Databases, Neo4j, MySQL, OLTP, NoSQL

 

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ASIC

ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuits. Almost everyone is aware of what is an integrated circuit (IC) – it is a set of multiple electronic circuits placed on a single small flat piece. By making ICs specific to a given application, one can reap benefits of enhanced performance and optimized power consumption. A common example is a chip designed to run a digital voice recorder.

What are the latest uses of ASIC?

Bitcoin uses blockchain technology and needs a lot of computational power to mine new bitcoins. There have been multiple ASIC developed for mining the bitcoins and have varied performances. Some of them have also been developed which mine Bitcoin as well as Litecoin. You can check this list for Bitcoin mining ASICs.

More Information about ASIC

ASIC - VLSI VL82C486 Single Chip 486 System Controller HV
In general, you will find such ICs in almost every electronic device. Typically, it does one thing and it does it well! These circuits embed custom logic and hence are considered as proprietary devices. An extension on ASIC is ASSP – Application-specific standard product. ASSP implements a specific function that in itself is a product.

Since ASICs are custom made, the design team focuses on speed optimization and also ensure lowest power consumption. It usually involves a lot of R&D work. This pushes the cost northwards, however, you tend to gain on mass production and long-term benefits to retain market position.

Reasons why it is used:

  • Compact size
  • Power and performance
  • IP Protection
  • Speed
  • Reliability

Types if ASIC

  • Gate-Array Design
  • Full-custom
  • Semi-custom
  • Platform

Related Keyword

Hardware

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Paravirtualization

Paravirtualization is a type of virtualization, which allows us to install and run one or more different operating systems (Guest OS) on a single physical server (Host OS). You might get tempted to compare it with Hypervisor and you wouldn’t be wrong. They have similarities and differences.

A Hypervisor is a software that allows installing one or more different operating systems on a single physical server. The OS which runs the Hypervisor is called as Host OS and the OS which is run by Hypervisor is called Guest OS. Here, guest OS doesn’t have a clue that it is running in a virtualized environment. This is where Hypervisor differs from Paravirtualization.

So how does Paravirtualization work?

Paravirtualization
Paravirtualization – Source: https://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Paravirtualization_(PV)

In virtualization, Hypervisor acts as a relay between guest OS and host OS. In Paravirtualization, guest OS needs to know that it is interacting with Hypervisor and hence needs to make different API calls. This calls for modifications to the guest OS and hence creates a tight coupling between guest OS and Hypervisor used. Since proprietary OS providers such as MS do not allow OS level modifications and hence you would end up using open source operating systems such as Linux. A good combination is Linux with Xen server

You would be wondering if there are any real advantages of paravirtualization. Paravirtualization has shown performance improvements for certain applications or in certain use cases, but it has not shown the reliability. Especially with the rise of software level virtualization, which shows very high reliability, need for Paravirtualization has gone down. The cost associated with guest OS modifications, tight coupling with Hypervisor, is not getting offset by the not-so-predictable performance gains. So, you wouldn’t find many instances where paravirtualization is used.

Related Links

Related Keywords

Hypervisor, Virtualization, Containers

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Material Design

Don’t get worried by reading the subject. This is not about any civil topic or interior design work. Material Design is a design concept introduced by Google which is prompting designers to rethink the web and mobile app UI. Here material is a metaphor. It is used to help you visualize web or mobile app as a physical object which has it’s own properties and responds to touch, zoom, pinch etc. Applications following material design present uniform behavior across various applications as well as various sizes of devices, thus giving uniform experience to the user.

Where can I see Material Design in action?

If you are on the android phone, it is everywhere in native apps (Android 5 onwards). When you use Chrome browser, check out settings and you will see it there.  If you click on a text field, the placeholder quickly moves to top left. If you click on a tab, the bottom border of the tab is highlighted. The buttons have a shadow effect giving a feeling of depth. All such things are based on Material Design principles.

Material Design

So what are the principles, this is based upon?

  • Each component occupies its own layer as if two physical objects are kept one on top of the other. They will not merge with each other, nor will the pass through each other. In simple terms – they appear as 3D objects.
  • Visual effect on one component will not follow through on other objects.
  • Some components would react to action (like touch, swipe, zoom etc) faster than others.
  • Every user interaction with the screen gives instant feedback to the user in terms action happened.
  • Components are aware of their surroundings. E.g. Upon touching a button, it pushes out certain components to make the place for the input field.
Material Design
Material Design – Example screen – Source: https://material.io

Similar to Bootstrap, there are several components pre-built and available for use to the developers. Refer to this article which has excellent comparison between Bootstrap and Material Design

In addition to Google’s own documentation, there are some very comprehensive articles about this design, check reference section below.

Related Links

Related Words

Bootstrap, Mobile App, Web App, Design, CSS

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Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a tool or a system for automating the deployment of containerized applications. In a loose analogy, one can say what Chef is for infrastructure deployments, Kubernetes is for container deployments.

History of Kubernetes

Kubernetes Logo
Kubernetes Logo – Source: GitHub

It was part of Google’s internal tool system called “Borg” which was later made as Open-source in 2015. Internal codename of this project was “Seven” and is reflected in the logo of this system.

Kubernetes has been maintained by Cloud Native Computing Foundation which is a collaboration between Google and Linux Foundation.

What does Kubernete offer?

It offers to manage the “immutable infrastructure” in an automated fashion. Typically, containers are launched using images which do not change. If you want to make changes to the software piece which is part of the container, you simply update the image, launch new containers and throw away the older containers. Kubernetes allows you to do this efficiently.

The lowest level abstraction that Kubernete provides is called a “Pod”. It consists of one or more containers which can run on a same “node”. A Node is a server or VM on which Kubernetes cluster is running. The containers in a Pod could be sharing resources and can communicate with each other. This allows running tightly knit services to be run from the same Pod.

In Kubernetes configuration, Pods are not updated but are simply destroyed. New Pods are created when any of the containers are required to be updated.

“Deployments” are something that runs the Kubernetes cluster. They store the configuration, dependencies, resource requirements and access etc. Kubernete also has a “ReplicationController” which allows you to replicate the Pods as per the need.

Kubernetes
Leading cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft and Google provide the managed Kuberenets services viz Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon EKS), Azure Container Service (AKS), Google Kubernetes Engine(GKE).

Related Links

Related Keywords

Docker, Container, DevOps, Chef, Puppet

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