Explanation
Conceptual explanation building understanding (Diataxis: understanding-oriented)
33 pages
ACID Transactions Explanation
An explanation about ACID Transactions and how TerminusDB ensures ACID compliance, Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability
Change Request Workflows - TerminusDB Tour
This page details how change request workflows function in TerminusDB to enable safe collaboration
Choosing a Query Interface: WOQL, GraphQL, or HTTP API
Compare TerminusDB's three query interfaces — HTTP Document API, GraphQL, and WOQL — and decide which to use for your workload.
DFRNT TwinfoxDB Enterprise Edition
DFRNT TwinfoxDB Enterprise extends TerminusDB with commercial support, multi-format document processing including JSON-LD @context support, RDF/XML, and Turtle, management tooling, and observability.
Document Graph API Howto
A howto guide for the TerminusDB document API interface.
Getting Started
TerminusDB Technical Documentation
Graphs Explanation
An introduction to the hierarchy and system of graphs used by TerminusDB for collaboration and revision control.
How to Use VectorLink
A series of how-to guides to get you started with VectorLink, the semantic indexer
How WOQL Finds and Streams Solutions
Understand how TerminusDB's Datalog engine uses goal-seeking backtracking to find solutions in the knowledge graph, how results can be collected or streamed as ndjson with chunked transfer encoding, and when to use each approach.
Immutability and Concurrency
Why TerminusDB avoids locks and how its immutable delta architecture enables safe concurrent access.
Immutable Database Explanation
An explanation of how the TerminusDB immutable database with Git-like version control implements immutability, and handles deleted and new data.
Knowledge Graph Database with Git-like Version Control
An instructional overview of TerminusDB as a git-for-data knowledge graph database — covering commits, branches, merges, rollback, diff and patch, time travel, and the similarities and differences with Git.
Next steps with TerminusDB
An overview of the ways to get started with TerminusDB with Javascript and Python on Windows, macOS, or Linux, and how to run it locally or in the cloud.
Operational Technologies Information Transfer
How to use TerminusDB in Operational Technologies environments for IEC62443, Purdue model and other environments where network segmentation is strict.
sys:JSON Internals - How It Works
Technical deep dive into sys:JSON implementation, storage, and behavior in TerminusDB
TerminusDB Dashboard Status
Information about the TerminusDB Dashboard component, its discontinuation, and how to continue using it if needed.
TerminusDB Document Model — Documents, Subdocuments, and Graph Relationships
TerminusDB stores graph documents in a schema-enforced triple store. Documents have typed relationships, subdocuments for nested data, and shared documents for reuse — combining document-store convenience with graph traversal power.
TerminusDB Documentation
TerminusDB is an open-source document graph database with built-in version control. Branch, diff, and merge your data like code. Start in 10 minutes with Docker.
TerminusDB Internals
Examples to use the internals of TerminusDB from the command line.
TerminusDB vs MongoDB
A neutral, factual comparison of TerminusDB and MongoDB — data model, schema enforcement, version control, querying, and when to choose each document database.
TerminusDB vs Neo4j
A neutral, factual comparison of TerminusDB and Neo4j — data model, query language, version control, schema enforcement, and when to choose each.
TerminusDB: At a glance
Description of the key technical features and capabilities of TerminusDB at a glance with links to the documentation
The Open Source Knowledge Graph Database
An instructional overview of TerminusDB as an open source knowledge graph database — a NoSQL graph database built on the closed world assumption of RDF, with an immutable history, ACID transactions, and a document-shaped class system that keeps related triples on a shared lifecycle.
The WOQL Query Language, Explained
WOQL (Web Object Query Language) is TerminusDB's declarative Datalog-based query language. Traverse document relationships without JOINs, branch-aware, with built-in unification.
The Write Path: Performance Internals
High-level overview of how TerminusDB handles document writes, the commit pipeline introduced in 12.1, and how to optimize for throughput.
Versioned Search
Semantic search with per-commit snapshots, branching, and hybrid retrieval for TerminusDB data products
Versioned Search Concepts
Core vocabulary for versioned search — domains, commits, branches, chunks, search modes, and distance
What is Datalog?
Datalog is a declarative query language for graph databases. Learn what Datalog is, how it compares to SQL, and why it excels at recursive queries.
What is DFRNT Hub?
Learn about DFRNT Hub, the company behind TerminusDB's commercial hosting and enterprise solutions.
What is Schema Weakening
An explanation about schema weakening and why you need it to change a schema which provides constraints and assurances of the shapes of your graph data
What is TerminusDB?
TerminusDB is an open-source document graph database with built-in version control. Branch, diff, merge, and time-travel your data like Git — with ACID transactions.
What is unification?
Understand unification of variables, a unique and powerful datalog concept included in TerminusDB
WOQL Architecture: AST Design & Security Model
How WOQL's AST-based architecture prevents injection attacks by construction, provides type safety across languages, and differs from string-based query approaches.