The Weekly Edge: MCP for the Semantic Web, 2 New Graph Databases, BattleGraphs, & More [1 August 2025]

It’s time for another edition of the Weekly Edge – your tl;dr of graph tech news, resources, and releases from the past seven days (or so) curated by the team at gdotv. 

This week, we’ve got lots to connect you with, including two new graph database releases (one RDF, one LPG), a great podcast on knowledge graphs, a quick read on graph analytics, a livestream discussion on graph visualization, and for fun: a competitive graph game! 

Let’s take a closer look.

Podcast: Exploring the Semantic Web with the Model Context Protocol

The Knowledge Graph Insights podcast hosted by Larry Swanson is always a terrific resource to check out, especially (but not exclusively) for folks in the RDF and ontology space. In the most recent episode of the KGI podcast, Larry interviews Emeka Okoye about the creation of RDF Explorer, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) service that lets any developer surf the semantic web without having to learn the specialized RDF language. 

This episode dives deep into knowledge engineering, the limitations of LLMs, AI tribalism, and of course how MCP dovetails well with ontologies. Read more about RDF Explorer here or check it out on GitHub. 

Beta Release: Tentris RDF Graph Database

It’s not every day that a new graph database drops, but today is that day. 

The Tentris team just announced the beta release of their new high-performance, disk-based RDF graph database. What’s it best for? Tentris Beta enables graph analytics that were previously deemed computationally infeasible. Sign up for the beta here and tell us (and probably also the Tentris team) what you think!

GA Release: Aerospike Graph Database 3.0

If RDF graphs aren’t your game, then I’ve got good news for the LPG folks in the crowd as well. This past Tuesday was the GA release of Aerospike Graph Database 3.0. Aerospike has been a long-running gdotv partner, and we’re excited for their team on this major accomplishment.  

There’s a lot included in Aerospike Graph 3.0, but here’s a quick rundown:

• Multi-property support on vertices
• Native datetime support
• 10x faster bulk loading at scale
• 50% reduction in on-disk storage footprint, making it cheaper to run

Get all the details in the full release announcement or read the release notes here. Congrats to the Aerospike team!

Blog Post: High-Performant Graph Queries on Apache Iceberg Powered by Ryft + PuppyGraph

Ever wanted to do graph analytics without, you know, a graph database? Well, you’re not alone. 

PuppyGraph and Ryft teamed up to help you scale your graph analytics without building and maintaining a separate graph database stack. Rather, they show you how to run complex graph queries directly on Apache Iceberg with no data movement or duplication using either openCypher or Gremlin.

Whether you’re graph curious or just graph fed-up-with-databases, this is a great read in either slideshow meme format or in a full-length blog post. Not all graph use cases require a native graph backend, so this might be your opportunity to explore other options. 

And hey, we’re compatible with PuppyGraph too, so we can pop your graph analytics straight on G.V() for some querying, exploration and visualization!

TinkerPop Wide Livestream: Bringing Manual Queries to Graph Explorer

Okay, so the livestream already happened, which means this is technically just, like, a…video? Earlier this week, Stephen Mallette from the Apache TinkerPop™ community hosted Kris McGinnes on the TinkerPop Wide Twitch channel to discuss new developments and capabilities in Graph Explorer with gdotv Founder Arthur Bigeard invited along for “color commentary.” 

Graph Explorer is an open-source low-code visual exploration tool for graph data, available under the Apache-2.0 license, and Kris walks through a number of ways you can use Graph Explorer to query your data using the Gremlin graph query language. Along the way, Kris invited Arthur to demo gdotv and compare and contrast its features with Graph Explorer. 

If you’re in the mood for some graph data visualization, it’s a great chat to catch up on. 

For Fun: BattleGraphs! Forge, Fortify, & Fight in the Network Arena

If the title of this game doesn’t immediately grab your attention, then you’re beyond all hope and I’m not sure why you’re reading the Weekly Edge (or maybe this game just isn’t for you). For the rest of us, this is exactly what we’ve all been waiting for: an analog game built around graph construction, querying, and analysis.

BattleGraphs is a two-player, competitive, educational board game wherein you build a physical network layout, answer graph analysis questions faster than your opponent, and then win eternal glory (we can only assume). Read the full description and intent behind BattleGraphs here on Nightingale or watch the 2-minute explainer on YouTube. Game components can be downloaded from OSF for free so really, you have no excuse. 

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That’s it for this week’s edition. Got something you want to nominate for inclusion in a future edition of the Weekly Edge? Ping us on on X | Bluesky | LinkedIn or email weeklyedge@gdotv.com.