Alistair Jones

What is Neo4j?

Why should I use it?

NOSQL

[ scale ]

source: NASA

Buffering...

[ performance ]

[ simplicity ]

source: RightNow community documentation

NOSQL

DENORMALISE

graph model

  • N
  • N
  • N
  • R
  • R
  • R

flexible model

  • Alistair
  • London
  • Neo4j
  • lives in
  • develops
  • Schema-free
  • Relate anything to anything
  • Store any property anywhere

flexibility with data quality

? (can't happen)
  • Prevents dangling relationships
  • => referential integrity is automatic
  • ACID transactions

shortest path

recommend a friend

FAST

dept_id dept_name parent_dept_id
1 ACME Corp null
2 Widgets 1
3 Corporate 1
4 Widget marketing 2
5 Widget engineering 2
employee_id dept_id employee_name
1 1 John
2 2 Mary
3 3 Steve
4 3 James
5 4 David
6 4 Liz
7 5 Dan
  • ACME
  • Widgets
  • Corporate
  • marketing
  • engineering
  • David
  • Liz
  • Dan
  • John
  • Mary
  • Steve
  • James 
start department = node:Department(name='Widgets')
match employee -[:works_in]-> sub_department
      -[0..*:parent]-> department
return employee

Why do people use Neo4j?

  • Performance: for their problem, significantly faster than any other database technology
  • Flexibility: store multiple overlapping hierarchies and networks, unconstrained by a fixed schema
  • Transactions: ensure the consistency required for mission-critical enterprise data

logistics

asset management & access control

network impact analysis

Thanks for Listening!

Come to the tutorial!

Alistair Jones
alistair.jones@neotechnology.com
@apcj