Nyala – Lynx project

This rather large research project involved:

• the development of a (pseudo) graph database, very much in the NoSQL spirit. The main difference with a true graphDB was that the graph API was created on top of SQL Server and not as a standalone service. The main advantage for doing this is the fact that you don’t need to go deep into all sort of tricky data storage developments which really require an effort on its own. The disadvantage is that one remains tightly bound to an relational structure and the need to convert back and forth between two vary different way of thinking about data relationships. Also, since data is stored on a ‘heap’ things like reporting or non-graph interrogations are less straightforward.
• a very innovative diagramming library (which turned into our ‘Lynx’ diagramming library) which had to display the graph-like structure of the aforementioned graph database
• an ASP.Net compatible membership provider on top of the graph database to enable the typical user scenario’s while retaining compatibility with ASP.Net (MVC).
• a lot of thinking about collaboration, workspaces and security. How to store an arbitrary set of data which can be shared but where security remains a number one citizen? This culminated in various concepts which were implemented in the graph datanbase.

While Lynx is now a commercial product, the graph database (‘Nyala’) is still in development and used as a backend for our SaaS prototype.

(click on picture below for a full screen view)