Book Image

Learning Neo4j 3.x - Second Edition

By : Jerome Baton
Book Image

Learning Neo4j 3.x - Second Edition

By: Jerome Baton

Overview of this book

Neo4j is a graph database that allows traversing huge amounts of data with ease. This book aims at quickly getting you started with the popular graph database Neo4j. Starting with a brief introduction to graph theory, this book will show you the advantages of using graph databases along with data modeling techniques for graph databases. You'll gain practical hands-on experience with commonly used and lesser known features for updating graph store with Neo4j's Cypher query language. Furthermore, you'll also learn to create awesome procedures using APOC and extend Neo4j's functionality, enabling integration, algorithmic analysis, and other advanced spatial operation capabilities on data. Through the course of the book you will come across implementation examples on the latest updates in Neo4j, such as in-graph indexes, scaling, performance improvements, visualization, data refactoring techniques, security enhancements, and much more. By the end of the book, you'll have gained the skills to design and implement modern spatial applications, from graphing data to unraveling business capabilities with the help of real-world use cases.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Authors
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Writing the Cypher syntax


I like short examples to set the mind in a good direction, so I'll start with this. If I want to write Romeo loves Juliet in Cypher, the Cypher syntax will be as follows:

(romeo:Person{name: "Romeo"})-[:LOVES]->(juliet:Person{name:"Juliet"})

See, this is almost ASCII-Art. Do you see the pattern?

(NODE1)-[:RELATION]->(NODE2)

Now, should you want to create those nodes and relations in your database, type the following in the prompt in the upper part of the Neo4j browser (available at localhost:7474 if you have started your server):

CREATE (romeo:Person{name: "Romeo"})-[:LOVES]->(juliet:Person{name:"Juliet"})

Then, you are greeted with a message telling you about counts of created nodes and relations.

There you are; you have just created data! Did you just say wow? Yes, that was easy. Indeed, every person I show Cypher to is impressed. Some students even swear!

As you have just inserted data into a fresh database, use this query if you want to see it:

MATCH (n)
RETURN...