A Comparative Study of Graph Databases versus Relational Databases for Modeling Outcome-Based Education

Education in Thailand is adapting due to rapid technological changes, an aging society, and the need for education to meet the industry’s demands for relearning and reskilling. The education must focus on learner-centered outcome-based learning and flexible learning unit to support lifelong learning. Our previous work designed a model to support flexible outcome-based learning using a relational database. This work extends the previous study by creating the two new models. The first model improves the original by using the relational structure to enhance query performance as well as reducing redundancy and operational costs. The second model adopts a graph database design due to its flexibility in handling different structures and its efficiency in managing large volumes of complex relationships. The performance of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) operations was compared across three models: Model#1 is our previous work’ s relational model, Model#2 is our improved relational model and Model#3 transforms to a graph database model. The results showed that the two new models: Model#2 and Model#3 have different advantages. Model#2 is better in data creation, loading, and indexed retrieval, while Model#3 is better when updating, deleting, and handling complex queries.