Short abstract

From graph modeling, through design constraints, to good practices when designing graph databases. Next a look at Cypher, indexes, query plans, hints and everything that is needed to write fast queries. Ending with some hints on how to fit Neo4j into a multi persistent environment. This walk is everything I wish someone told me before I’ve started using Neo4j.

Description

Starting with basics of graph modeling, through the strangest design constraints, to good practices when modeling problems using graph databases. Next a look at how to query graph models, so a big portion of Cypher and indexes, query plans, hints and everything that is needed to write fast queries. We will end with some hints how to fit Neo4j into a multi persistent environment.

Other

This is a continuation of my Introduction to graph databases talk.

My adventure with graph databases started a few years ago when I tried to model a medium size graph structure on a relational database.The fact that I was not using the right tool for this job became clear quite fast. I’ve checked many graph databases at that time, but Neo4j with Cypher was a clear winner.

This walk is everything I wish someone told me before I’ve started using Neo4j. Some things are bad, some are great but a lot of them are just different. I’ll try to talk about things that actually needed to use Neo4j in a custom scenario.