Preface

Welcome to the connected world. In the information age, everything around us is based on entities, relations, and above all, connectivity. Data is becoming exponentially more complex, which is affecting the performance of existing data stores. The most natural form in which data is visualized is in the form of graphs. In recent years, there has been an explosion of technologies to manage, process, and analyze graphs. While companies such as Facebook and LinkedIn have been the most well-known users of graph technologies for social web properties, a quiet revolution has been spreading across other industries. More than 30 of the Forbes Global 2000 companies, and many times as many start-ups have quietly been working to apply graphs to a wide array of business-critical use cases.

Neo4j, a graph database by Neo Technologies, is the leading player in the market for handling related data. It is not only efficient and easier to use, but it also includes all security and reliability features of tabulated databases.

We are entering an era of connected data where companies that can master the connections between their data—the lines and patterns linking the dots and not just the dots—will outperform the organizations that fail to recognize connectedness. It will be a long time before relational databases ebb into oblivion. However, their role is no longer universal. Graph databases are here to stay, and for now, Neo4j is setting the standard for the rest of the market.

This book presents an insight into how Neo4j can be applied to practical industry scenarios and also includes tweaks and optimizations for developers and administrators to make their systems more efficient and high performing.