Very often, users will want to use the Neo4j Graph Database as part of a solution that uses a polyglot persistence strategy. This is a term that was first coined by Scott Leberknight, but later used and explained many times by well-known authors such as Martin Fowler. Essentially, what we are talking about here is the fact that most complex applications these days feature a number of different data patterns that are used under very different workloads and that can therefore benefit from very different implementation strategies.

Here's what a potential polyglot persistence architecture could look like for a hypothetical, or speculative, retailer:

An example of polyglot persistence

In the Speculative Retailer's Web Application featured in the preceding figure, there may be different use cases that rely on different data patterns, and that would be best implemented in different data stores.

The consequence of a strategy like polyglot persistence is, of course, that you introduce...