**What does "graph database" refer to in data management?**
A **graph database** is a database designed to represent and store data in a graph format, utilizing nodes, edges, and properties to depict relationships and connections among data points. This structure makes it especially suitable for managing highly interconnected data, as it allows for efficient querying of relationships. Graph databases are utilized in applications like social networks, recommendation engines, and complex network analysis. By leveraging graph theory, these databases offer enhanced performance for traversing relationships compared to traditional relational databases, where relationships are typically handled through foreign keys.