Bloom-ing marvellous!
Neo4j Bloom 1.3 is now available. With an array of new features, it’s also available for free in Neo4j Desktop!
Bloom 1.3 is out! In this post, we are going to check out some of the new features, as well as having a run-through of the cool Bloom things!
Neo4j Bloom — now available for everybody!
This is the headline feature: Prior to 1.3, Bloom was available only via subscription.
This has now changed, and everybody now has access to Bloom via Neo4j Desktop. With this new version of Bloom, you will be able to explore data on a local Neo4j instance, as well as customising your perspective for your needs.
You can get started right away. Check that you have the latest version of Neo4j Desktop, and you will be able to launch Bloom on a local database.
Not quite ready to download Neo4j Desktop? No problem at all — come explore Bloom on our Neo4j Sandbox - no download necessary. If you require something more permanent (sandboxes only last for days), you can also use Bloom on Neo4j Aura in the cloud.
New to Bloom?
Welcome! Here’s a great place to start, as we highlight all of the new, recent features in Bloom below, you will start to get a feel for what you can do with this impressive visualisation tool. We will also outline some great content to get you up to speed.
Here is the Bloom video from Connections:
You can also check out our developer guide that walks you through the whole Bloom experience.
Find stuff quickly
Bloom is a graph data visualisation and exploration tool. Rather than using Cypher to interrogate your data, Bloom allows you to use near-natural language to ask questions instead.
When you start up your database, Bloom does a lot of initial investigation to understand the structure of your data and naming conventions used. It goes a step further to try and accommodate friendly versions of naming conventions used.
For example, a CONNECTED_TO relationship type can be referred to as connected to , you can skip relationship types and node labels altogether (this is known as filling the gap), you can even specify property names and values without saying which node they belong to, provided indexes are in place.
Although produced on a previous version of Bloom, you can check out some searching tips and tricks from talk of mine, or this associated write-up.
A new, recent feature in Bloom now also supports case-insensitive searching. Now you can explore your data without worrying about upper and lower case. Do make sure you have indexes on any properties you would like to explore.
Putting it into perspective — maximising how you visualise your data
One of the most powerful aspects of Bloom is being able to set up the display so that your users have something that is intuitive to understand, easy to explore and has low barriers to entry.
You can customise Bloom by setting up the perspective. There are a number of things you can do to customise the perspective to your specific use-case:
- Colour-code labels and relationships — As well as choosing colours for your node labels, you can now also select colours based on relationship types.
- Use icons to help visually describe nodes rapidly — Select the most appropriate image for your node categories from an extensive library of icons.
- Adjust the size and shading of nodes and the thickness of relationship lines — There is now a great flexibility in how nodes and relationships are displayed. You can either set default node size and relationship thickness by label and type, you can also dynamically allocate colour shading and/or size based on property values. This is especially powerful when looking to do visual inspection on data processed with graph algorithms or complex queries. For instance represent the page-rank of a node by size and the community it belongs to by colour.
- Customise what labels, relationships and properties should be visible — As well as deciding what captions you want shown on nodes, for example, you can also also choose what properties you do not want shown. And, you can also hide node label categories and relationship types altogether!
- Encapsulate parameterised Cypher queries — Search phrases give you the complete flexibility of writing custom, parameterised Cypher queries, whilst labelling and summoning them with a user-friendly name and pass in parameters into a natural language phrase. You can now specify the parameter type, further enhancing this functionality.
I recently did a live stream session in Twitch on building a Bloom perspective from scratch — you can follow along and build one too! We live stream on a range of topics. Check out the Twitch schedule.
Sharing your findings
You now have a couple of ways you can share your insights and findings from your Bloom exploration.
Export as CSV — You can now export internal node IDs and relationship types for data displayed on the scene. This can be useful if you want to take a subset of data from your database for further analysis.
For example, the CSV for the above will look something like this:
Nodes as a Cypher query — Another cool thing you can do is copy selected nodes in the scene (using the handy keyboard shortcut of cmd/ctrl + c), and a Cypher query to find those nodes will be copied to clipboard. For example, if ‘Teatime Chocolate Biscuits’ and ‘Scottish Longbreads’ are selected from the scene above and copied using keyboard shortcuts, the following will be available:
MATCH (a0:Product {reorderLevel: 5, unitsInStock: 25, unitPrice: 9.2, supplierID: "8", productID: "19", quantityPerUnit: "10 boxes x 12 pieces", categoryID: "3", unitsOnOrder: 0, productName: "Teatime Chocolate Biscuits"})
MATCH (a1:Product {reorderLevel: 15, unitsInStock: 6, unitPrice: 12.5, supplierID: "8", productID: "68", quantityPerUnit: "10 boxes x 8 pieces", categoryID: "3", unitsOnOrder: 10, productName: "Scottish Longbreads"})
return a0, a1Other ways to get Bloom
As mentioned above, the easiest way you can get Bloom, and for free, is through Neo4j Desktop. This version will allow you to explore your local Neo4j instances.
If you would rather not download any software, you can launch a time-limited Bloom sandbox, no installation required!
Bloom is also now directly available on Neo4j Aura. You no longer need to access Aura with Neo4j Desktop to start Bloom. You can find out more about how to access Bloom from Aura here.
Bloom server edition allows you to run Bloom independently from Desktop, and on remote, as well as local, instances of Neo4j. This is available under a paid license, and you can find out more from your friendly sales rep.
Last but not least, if you are a start-up, you are entitled to a free copy of Bloom server edition. Find out more about our start-up program here.
Where to learn more?
- Get going fast by checking out the Bloom user interface guide.
- Read up on specific features in the documentation.
- Need some help? Then come join us on the Neo4j Community site.
