GraphSAGE — Inductive Learning and Scaling to Big Graphs
The graph convolutional network has two problems that make it impractical for real systems: it can't handle new nodes, and it needs the whole graph in memory at once. GraphSAGE fixes both with one shift in perspective — learn a reusable function that builds a node's embedding from a sample of its neighbors, rather than learning a fixed embedding per node. This is the idea that made GNNs usable on billion-node industrial graphs, and it's why most production GNNs are GraphSAGE-style.
The GCN can't handle new nodes and needs the whole graph in memory. GraphSAGE fixes both: learn a reusable function that builds an embedding from a sample of neighbors, rather than a fixed per-node vector. Inductive learning and neighbor sampling — the ideas that made GNNs work on billion-node industrial graphs.