Why Property Graphs Aren't Enough

Are Property Graphs living up to the hype? Maybe the model itself is the problem. We made the move from relational databases to graph databases to escape "Join Pain" and model the real world more naturally — but for many engineering teams, that promise has curdled into something worse: the Spaghetti Graph. Complex queries. Ugly workarounds for multi-party relationships. Fragile schemas that shatter with every iteration and become a nightmare to maintain. The good news? The problem isn't your data. In this talk, Joshua Send breaks down why standard Labeled Property Graphs (LPGs) fall short when applied to complex domains — and introduces TypeDB, a strongly-typed database that brings together the connectivity of a graph with the integrity of a relational model. You'll come away understanding why LPGs struggle at scale and complexity, what "Spaghetti Graphs" are and how teams fall into the trap, how TypeDB's type system enforces data integrity without sacrificing flexibility, and when a strongly-typed graph database is the right tool for the job. Whether you're deep in a graph migration, evaluating database architectures, or just tired of schema chaos — this one's for you.