Part 1. Introduction to Neo4j

What is Neo4j? What is it good for? Is it the right database for your problem domain and what kind of things can it do? In part 1 of Neo4j In Action, we’ll answer these questions and more.

Chapter 1 introduces general graph database concepts, and begins to explore some of Neo4j’s key aspects. Chapter 2 continues looking at general graph-related problems and domains, with a focus on graph data modeling techniques and approaches for various circumstances. Chapters 3 to 5 are where we really start getting our hands dirty. Using an example social network of users and the movies they like, we begin exploring Neo4j starting with how to use the core API to perform the basic functionality of creating and connecting nodes, and techniques for identifying different types of nodes. Traversing graph data is also a key feature of Neo4j and chapter 4 addresses this by investigating the Neo4j Traversal API.

Chapter 5 introduces the various “indexing” strategies and options available in Neo4j, beginning by looking at the manual (legacy) option, before moving on to the built-in indexing option available from Neo4j 2.0 onward.