By now, you should have a good understanding of what graph databases are, and how they relate to other database management systems and models. Much of the remainder of this book will be drilling into quite a bit more detail on the specifics of Neo4j as an example implementation of such a database management system. Before that, however, it makes sense to explore why these kinds of databases are of such interest to modern-day software professionals – developers, architects, project and product managers, and IT directors alike.

The fact of the matter is that there are a number of typical data problems, and database system queries are an excellent match for a graph database, and that there are a number of other types of data questions that are not specifically designed to be answered by such systems. Let's explore these for a bit and determine the characteristics of your dataset and your query patterns that will determine whether graph databases are going to...