Beyond Joins: Named and Class-Based Connections

Relational databases force developers to think in terms of join tables — glue structures that capture relationships but hide their meaning. FlexVertex takes a different path: connections are first-class citizens, with names, classes, and behaviors of their own.

Why It Matters

Real-world entities are defined not only by what they are but how they relate. A Customer without a Purchase connection, or a Technician without a MaintenanceEvent, is incomplete context. For AI workloads particularly, those missing links become blind spots that weaken inference and response justification.

Named vs. Class-Based Connections

In FlexVertex, you can declare a connection explicitly with a name, or abstract it into a reusable class.

• Named connections are direct, intuitive: Person → Friend → Person.

• Class-based connections let you capture richer patterns: Person → Visited → Place, extendable with class inheritance, polymorphism, and attributes like timestamps or ratings.

Both approaches keep relationships explicit, traversable, and query-ready — no brittle join tables required.

The Takeaway

Connections aren’t afterthoughts in FlexVertex; they’re part of the model. Named or class-based, they carry meaning that AI and humans can use directly.

Learn More

Read the full article in our Technical Visions documentation.