Most people who know how to drive a car don’t know how every single part of an automobile engine works.

Only a few drivers have an in-depth knowledge of automobile mechanics, some people have a basic understanding of how a car engine works, and others haven’t cracked open the hood of their vehicle even once! Yet, every driver still gets to their destination.

The same goes for data management: Some members of your team are technical experts, some have only a high-level understanding of database technology, and others use a whiteboard more often than a keyboard.

But what if there were a way for every member of your team – both the technical and the non-technical – to tap into the power of connected data? There is.

Today we’re going to take a closer look at one particular part of GraphGrid called a Showme.

Showmes allow your developers to tune and optimize your graph database engine for specific tasks – without requiring everyone to understand the inner workings of that engine. But just like in our automobile example above, your entire team can use Showmes to tap into the potential of graph technology.

What Is a Showme?

Showmes – pronounced  / SHOW-mees / – are part of the Manager service that allow you to create and control dynamic APIs using the Geequel graph query language. These dynamic APIs return targeted result sets of graph-based data. As new data is introduced into your graph database, the Showme incorporates those updates into its results in real time.

Showmes support the most common REST methods and return data translated from the Geequel query as JSON. Showmes can also be secured to perform authentication and authorization challenges using Geequel. Showme endpoints are routed to the Manager service for request processing.

Going further, you can sequence your Showmes into chains that execute complex, cascading graph queries in order to reveal deep insights into your connected data.

Powered by the Ease of Geequel…

Using Showmes, your team can rapidly develop and deploy full APIs that fit your specific use case or business requirements. Creating a Showme is as simple and easy as writing a graph query.

When your developers use Geequel, they don’t have to learn a whole new query language. Geequel is an implementation of openCypher®* and is a great on-ramp to the forthcoming Graph Query Language (GQL) standard being developed by ISO. Developers who learn Geequel will find it has a lot of similarities to other popular graph query languages too.

If your development team can think in graph patterns, then they can quickly and easily query graph data using Geequel. And by using Geequel, they can build Showmes for the rest of your team.

…But Accessible to Everyone

Technical members of your team will love Geequel – but what about everyone else? This is where Showmes shine. Your data analysts, business users, and even other non-graph developers can all use Showmes to generate connected data insights without having to know or understand a graph query language.

For your developers who know Geequel, a Showme is a great shortcut they can tune as needed. For non-technical team members, a Showme helps them get their job done quickly and automagically – without having to master the technical details.

Showmes let your non-dev team reap all of the benefits of graph queries without any of the costs. It’s the best of both worlds.

To learn more about building Showmes with GraphGrid, read the GraphGrid Showme documentation or dive into the Showme Basics tutorial here.

Conclusion

Showmes are a powerful part of GraphGrid. The graph experts on your team can build highly tuned dynamic APIs using Geequel, and your non-technical personnel can use those APIs to tap into the power of connected data – without any prior graph knowledge.

Most importantly, Showmes allow your organization to execute powerful data-driven tasks without losing focus on achieving your mission.

What are you waiting for? 

Give Showmes a test drive when you download GraphGrid today.

*OpenCypher® is a trademark of Neo4j, Inc. GraphGrid, Inc. is not affiliated in any way with Neo4j, Inc.