I had an interesting chat with Gary Short at SQLBits last week about social network analysis, and he pointed out that Microsoft Research’s graph database, Project Trinity, was now available to download. You can find out more about it here:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/trinity/default.aspx
Gary suggested that Trinity might, at some point in the future, follow F# in being a MS Research project that becomes a commercial project and to be honest I think he might be right. If Analysis Services is a database that is optimised for multidimensional data, why not add Trinity to the SQL Server stack as a specialised database for graph data? After all, social network analysis is only going to become more and more important in corporate BI in the future, and that’s just one use case for a graph database. And if Trinity becomes a product, why not include features of a tool like NodeXL in Project Crescent?
I believe Microsoft will be adding social network data analysis in BI stack. Because, their twitter analysis in power pivot was popular in BI sector.
This project must be giving another dimension to BI analyst.
Thanks for sharing Chris!