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Glossary

Term Description
Entity An entity represents a point in a graph
Edge An edge is a connection between two vertices
Vertex In Gaffer, a vertex is the id of an entity. Note that a vertex can exist on an edge without an associated entity. Any querying will only show these vertices on their associated edges
Node A node is what Gaffer calls an entity
Properties A property is a key/value pair that stores data on both edges and entities
Element The word is used to describe edges or entities
Stores A Gaffer store represents the backing database responsible for storing or facilitating access to a graph
Operations An operation is an instruction / function that you send to the API to manipulate and query a graph
View Used in Gaffer like a filter it lets you view the data differently in a query, often used to filter the data you get back from a given operation
Matched vertex matchedVertex is a field added to Edges which are returned by Gaffer queries, stating whether your seeds matched the source or destination
Python A programming language that is used to build applications. Gaffer uses Python to interact with the API
Java A object oriented programming language used to build software. Gaffer is primarily built in Java
Database A database is a collection of organised structured information or data typically stored in a computer system
API Application Programming Interface. An API is for one or more services / systems to communicate with each other
JSON JavaScript Object Notation is a text based format for representing structure data based on JavaScript object syntax
GafferPop The library used to translate Gremlin queries to Gaffer operations using the TinkerPop framework
Orphaned Vertices Vertices on an edge without any associated entity in the Graph