Vertex Identifier and Partition¶

This document provides some introductions to vertex identifier (VID for short) and partition.

In Nebula Graph, vertices are identified with vertex identifiers (i.e. VIDs). When inserting a vertex, you must specify a VID for it. You can generate VIDs either with your own application or with the hash function provided by Nebula Graph.

VIDs must be unique in a graph space. That is, in the same graph space, vertices with the same VID are considered as the same vertex. VIDs in different graph spaces are independent of each other. In addition, one VID can have multiple TAGs.

When inserting data into Nebula Graph, vertices and edges are distributed across different partitions. And the partitions are located on different machines. If you want some certain vertices to locate on the same partition (i.e. on the same machine), you can control the generation of the VIDs by using the following formula.

The relation between VID and partition is:

VID mod partition_number = partition ID + 1

In the preceding formula,

• mod is the modulo operation.
• partition_number is the number of partition for the graph space where the VID is located, namely the value of partition_num in the CREATE SPACE statement.
• partition ID is the ID for the partition where the VID is located.

For example, if there are 100 partitions, the vertices with VID 1, 101, 1001 will be stored on the same partition.

In addition, the correspondence between the partition ID and the machines are random. Therefore, you can't assume that any two partitions are located on the same machine.