Graph DB (gold bars): Index-free adjacency enables constant-time traversals.
Performance stays near 4-15ms regardless of hop depth.
RDBMS (orange bars): Each additional hop requires a full JOIN scan.
At 5 hops, many queries exceed a 15-minute timeout.
Takeaway: Both perform similarly at 1-2 hops.
For impact analysis (5-10 hops), graph databases are orders of magnitude faster.