an introduction to neo4j

Neo4j Introduction

the basic stuff

Agenda

● What / Why

● Learn through an FoF example

● More involved problem: Which airport

performans better

● Advance modeling topics

What is it?

A Graph Database

A Graph Database

Relational Model

In Graph

Why Graph Database

● Wicked fast on a type of problem

● Scale up independent of amount of data

● Intuitive modeling

● Fun and Freedom (embedded mode)

Setup (on a mac)

$> brew update

$> brew install neo4j

$> neo4j start

$> open http://localhost:7474

3 way to use

* Standalone with Cypher *

* Server plugin

* Embedded

Cypher

is the way get stuff out from Neo4j graph

A FoF example covers

Create

Match

Where

Count

Order by

Create node/relationship

create(joe:Person {name: Joe” })

create(sara:Person {name: “Sara” })

create joe-[:knows]->sara

Who is Joe’s friend?

MATCH (joe { name: 'Joe' })-[:knows]-(friends)

RETURN joe, friends

Joe’s friends of friends

MATCH (joe { name: 'Joe' })-[:knows*2..2]-(fof)

RETURN fof

Wait, Joe already knows sara

MATCH (joe { name: 'Joe' })-[:knows*2..2]-(fof)

WHERE NOT(joe-[:knows]-fof)

RETURN fof

Who is more likely to be Joe's

friend?

MATCH (joe { name: 'Joe' })-[:knows*2..2]-(fof)

WHERE NOT(joe-[:knows]-fof)

RETURN fof.name, count(*)

ORDER BY count(*) DESC, fof.name

A flight/airport example

http://gist.neo4j.org/?6619085

Data From

http://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_SelectFields.a

sp?Table_ID=236&DB_Short_Name=On-Time

Data model

Ask questions

● How many flight canceled

● How many flight delayed

● Average taxi waiting time

● Shortest path between

Other way to use neo4j

● Embedded (CTA)

● Server plugin (Grok)

Neo4j modeling tips

● Understand the performance character○ Traversing is fast

○ IO is slow

○ Node properties are lazy loaded/cached

● Normalization verse denormalization in

relational database performance tuning