Exploring a possible solution

Now that we know that linear data structures cannot efficiently store many-to-many relationships, let's look at a data structure designed to solve this problem efficiently. A graph is a non-linear data structure comprising one or more nodes connected via links called edges. Each connection between nodes represents the relationship between the nodes. A graph data structure stores and manipulates many-to-many relationships between data.

Each edge in the graph can hold data, often called the edge's weight. Depending on what the graph represents, the weight could be anything.