# Dgraph Database Semantics

DevFeed: [Dgraph Database Semantics](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/dgraph-database-semantics-22164.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.ardanlabs.com/blog/2020/06/dgraph-database-semantics.html>)

Published: 2020-06-26T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [William Kennedy](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/william-kennedy.md>)

Topics: [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [graph-database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/graph-database.md>), [Scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scalability.md>), [Architecture & Design](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/architecture-design.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [Availability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/availability.md>), [Replication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/replication.md>), [Transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/transactions.md>), [Resilience](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/resilience.md>)

Tags: [acid](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/acid.md>), [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [ardan-labs](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ardan-labs.md>), [availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/availability.md>), [blog](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/blog.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [distributed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [go](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/go.md>), [go-programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/go-programming.md>), [golang](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/golang.md>), [graph-database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/graph-database.md>), [high-availability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/high-availability.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [low-latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/low-latency.md>), [programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming.md>), [replication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/replication.md>), [resilience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/resilience.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>), [servers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/servers.md>), [sharding](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sharding.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>), [transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transactions.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains the semantics behind Dgraph's description as a distributed graph database. It provides a high-level mental model for claims involving horizontal scalability, cluster-wide ACID transactions, low-latency arbitrary-depth joins, synchronous replication, high availability, and crash resilience, while leaving lower-level mechanics to the referenced paper.

## Source excerpt

Introduction In this paper written by Manish Jain (the founder of Dgraph) he describes Dgraph as: a distributed graph database which provides horizontal scalability, distributed cluster-wide ACID transactions, low-latency arbitrary-depth joins, synchronous replication, high availability, and crash resilience. There are many claims being stated here which frankly I didn't understand the meaning of the first time I read this sentence. I decided I wanted to better understand these claims with the hope that it would help me understand Dgraph's architecture and engineering decisions better.