[[graph-introduction]]
=== Introduction

_Graph_ provides a way to discover how items in an {es} index are related. You can
explore the connections between indexed terms and see which connections are the most meaningful.
This can be useful in a variety of applications, from fraud detection to recommendation engines.

image::user/graph/images/graph-network.jpg["Graph network"]

For example, you might use Graph to uncover website vulnerabilities that hackers are targeting
so you can harden your website. Or, you might provide Graph-based personalized recommendations
to your e-commerce customers.

Graph consists of two components: a simple, yet powerful
graph exploration API and a {kib} UI that provides an interactive Graph visualization tool.

You can use Graph with your existing {es} indices--simply start exploring!

[[how-graph-works]]
[float]
==== How Graph works
Graph provides an alternative way to extract and summarize information about the documents and terms in your {es} index. A _graph_ is really just a network of related items. In our case, this means a network of related terms in the index.

In the Graph API, the terms you want to include in the graph are called _vertices_.
The relationship between any two vertices is a _connection_. The connection
summarizes the documents that contain both vertices' terms.

image::user/graph/images/graph-vertices-connections.jpg["Graph components"]

NOTE: If you're into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory[Graph theory], you might know
vertices and connections as _nodes_ and _edges_. They're the same thing, we just want to use
terminology that makes sense to people who aren't graph geeks and avoid any confusion with the
nodes in an {es} cluster.

The beauty of Graph is that it works out of the box with existing {es} indices and doesn't
require you to store any additional data. How? The vertices are simply the terms that you've
already indexed. The connections are derived on the fly using {es} aggregations. What's
more, Graph is able to identify the most _meaningful_ connections by taking advantage of {es}
relevance scoring. The same data structures and relevance ranking tools built into {es} to
support text searches enable the Graph API to separate useful signals from the noise that is typical
of most connected data.

This foundation lets you easily answer questions like:

* What are the shared behaviors of people trying to hack my website?
* If users bought this type of gardening gloves, what other products might they be interested in?
* Which people on Stack Overflow have expertise in both Hadoop-related technologies and Python-related tech?

But what about performance, you ask? The {es} aggregation framework enables Graph to quickly
summarize millions of documents as a single super-connection. Instead of retrieving every banking transaction
between accounts A and B, Graph can derive a single connection that represents that relationship. And, of course,
this summarization process works across multi-node clusters and scales with your {es} deployment.
Advanced options let you control how Graph samples and summarizes the data. You can also set timeouts to
prevent Graph queries from adversely affecting the cluster.

[[exploring-connections]]
[float]
==== Visualizing connections with Graph

The Graph plugin for {kib} lets you interactively explore connections within your data. This
is a great way to get acquainted with what the Graph API has to offer.

When you open the Graph app, getting started is as easy as 1, 2, 3:

. Select an index.
. Select a multi-value field that contains the terms you want to graph. (The vertices
in the graph will be selected from these terms.)
. Enter a search query to discover relationships between terms in the selected field.

For example, we indexed user data from Last.fm that contains the top artists played by each
user. To use the Graph UI to find artists we might like, we can select the Last.fm index, select the field that contains the raw artist information, and search for an artist we like:

image::user/graph/images/graph-init-screen.jpg["Getting started with graph"]


The weight of the connection between two vertices indicates how strongly they are related.
You can click any connection to view more information about the relationship:

image::user/graph/images/graph-link-summary.jpg["Link summary"]

Once you have your initial graph, you can use the toolbar buttons to explore additional connections. Click the Expand button image:user/graph/images/graph-expand-button.jpg[Expand Selection] to display additional vertices that connect to your graph. Click the Link button image:user/graph/images/graph-link-button.jpg[Add links to existing terms] to display additional connections between the displayed vertices. To explore a particular area of the graph, select the vertices you are interested in and click the Expand or Link button. To step back through your changes to the graph, click the Undo button image:user/graph/images/graph-undo-button.jpg[Undo].

To see more relationships within your data, you can submit additional queries.

image::user/graph/images/graph-add-query.jpg["Adding networks"]

NOTE: By default, when you submit a search query Graph searches all available fields. You can constrain your search to a particular field using the Lucene query syntax. For example,
`country: ireland`.


[float]
=== Where to go next

<<graph-getting-started, Getting Started>> :: Install the Graph plugin and Kibana app to start
exploring relationships in your data.

[float]
=== Have comments, questions, or feedback?

Head over to our {forum}[Graph Discussion Forum] to share your experience, questions, and
suggestions.
