The GraphX component of Spark supports graph-based operations, similar to technologies such as graph databases that support specialized data structures. These make it easy to use, access, and represent inter-connected points of data, such as social networks. Besides analytics, the Spark GraphX platform supports graph algorithms that are useful for business use cases that require relationships to be represented at scale. As an example, credit card companies use Graph based databases similar to the GraphX component of Spark to build recommendation engines that detect users with similar characteristics. These characteristics may include buying habits, location, demographics, and other qualitative and quantitative factors. Using Graph systems in these cases allows companies to build networks with nodes representing individuals and edges representing relationship metrics to find common features amongst them.