Starting! First to try Neo4J.
So I decided to start review the first Graph database, first I’ll review it externally, read about it and summarize and on the following post I’ll cover my first experience with it.
Neo4j is a graph database that allows to store and query data as nodes and relationships. It’s the most popular graph database in the world according to db-engine, with huge brands using it (according to their site) like NASA, eBay, Adobe, and Airbnb.
Neo4j supports a query language called Cypher. And it comes with aset of tools, libraries, and frameworks to support it and a very cool UI.
Neo4j is available in different editions and deployment options. It’s developed as an open source GPLv3 product. You can download Neo4j Desktop for free. You can also use Neo4j Aura, a fully managed cloud service that takes care of the infrastructure and scaling for you. They also a free startup program. For enterprise customers, Neo4j offers an enterprise edition but I didn’t get to really get what does it offer, it seems like they really push everyone to use Aura.
As its name suggest it’s written in Java (yes a database can be written in Java), it stores data as fixed-length records in different files according to their type. Neo4j also maintains indexes on nodes and relationships to speed up queries that use labels or types.
A cool feature Neo4j has is: embedded. In embedded mode, Neo4j runs as a library within your application process and directly accesses the data files on disk. In server mode, Neo4j runs as a separate process that exposes a RESTful API or a binary protocol (Bolt) for clients to communicate with it. You can also use Neo4j in cluster mode, where multiple instances work together to provide high availability and scalability.
Last, you can also use Neo4j Browser or Neo4j Bloom to interact with your data visually and explore its structure. It provides various of other tools for managing and administering your graph database. You can use neo4j-admin or neo4j commands to perform tasks such as backup, restore, import, export, check consistency, migrate configuration, etc.
If you have tips for Neo4J please do share, I’m going to try Neo4J without reading these tips and only then I’ll read the tips and see what did I miss.
