Table of Contents

Copyright

Brief Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

About this Book

About the Authors

About the Cover Illustration

1. Introduction to Neo4j

Chapter 1. A case for a Neo4j database

1.1. Why Neo4j?

1.2. Graph data in a relational database

1.2.1. Querying graph data using MySQL

1.3. Graph data in Neo4j

1.3.1. Traversing the graph

1.4. SQL joins versus graph traversal on a large scale

1.5. Graphs around you

1.6. Neo4j in NoSQL space

1.6.1. Key-value stores

1.6.2. Column-family stores

1.6.3. Document-oriented databases

1.6.4. Graph databases

1.6.5. NoSQL categories compared

1.7. Neo4j: the ACID-compliant database

1.8. Summary

Chapter 2. Data modeling in Neo4j

2.1. What is a data model for Neo4j?

2.1.1. Modeling with diagrams: a simple example

2.1.2. Modeling with diagrams: a complex example

2.2. Domain modeling

2.2.1. Entities and properties

2.3. Further examples

2.3.1. Underground stations example

2.3.2. Band members example

2.4. Summary

Chapter 3. Starting development with Neo4j

3.1. Modeling graph data structures

3.2. Using the Neo4j API

3.2.1. Creating nodes

3.2.2. Creating relationships

3.2.3. Adding properties to nodes

3.2.4. Node type strategies

3.2.5. Adding properties to relationships

3.3. Node labels

3.4. Summary

Chapter 4. The power of traversals

4.1. Traversing using the Neo4j Core Java API

4.1.1. Finding the starting node

4.1.2. Traversing direct relationships

4.1.3. Traversing second-level relationships

4.1.4. Memory usage considerations

4.2. Traversing using the Neo4j Traversal API

4.2.1. Using Neo4j’s built-in traversal constructs

4.2.2. Implementing a custom evaluator

4.3. Summary

Chapter 5. Indexing the data

5.1. Creating the index entry

5.2. Finding the user by their email

5.3. Dealing with more than one match

5.4. Dealing with changes to indexed data

5.5. Automatic indexing

5.5.1. Schema indexing

5.5.2. Auto-indexing

5.6. The cost/benefit trade-off of indexing

5.6.1. Performance benefit of indexing when querying

5.6.2. Performance overhead of indexing when updating and inserting

5.6.3. Storing the index

5.7. Summary

2. Application Development with Neo4j

Chapter 6. Cypher: Neo4j query language

6.1. Introduction to Cypher

6.1.1. Cypher primer

6.1.2. Executing Cypher queries

6.2. Cypher syntax basics

6.2.1. Pattern matching

6.2.2. Finding the starting node

6.2.3. Filtering data

6.2.4. Getting the results

6.3. Updating your graph with Cypher

6.3.1. Creating new graph entities

6.3.2. Deleting data

6.3.3. Updating node and relationship properties

6.4. Advanced Cypher

6.4.1. Aggregation

6.4.2. Functions

6.4.3. Piping using the with clause

6.4.4. Cypher compatibility

6.5. Summary

Chapter 7. Transactions

7.1. Transaction basics

7.1.1. Adding in a transaction

7.1.2. Finishing what you start and not trying to do too much in one go

7.2. Transactions in depth

7.2.1. Transaction semantics

7.2.2. Reading in a transaction and explicit read locks

7.2.3. Writing in a transaction and explicit write locks

7.2.4. The danger of deadlocks

7.3. Integration with other transaction management systems

7.4. Transaction events

7.5. Summary

Chapter 8. Traversals in depth

8.1. Traversal ordering

8.1.1. Depth-first

8.1.2. Breadth-first

8.1.3. Comparing depth-first and breadth-first ordering

8.2. Expanding relationships

8.2.1. StandardExpander

8.2.2. Ordering relationships for expansion

8.2.3. Custom expanders

8.3. Managing uniqueness

8.3.1. NODE_GLOBAL uniqueness

8.3.2. NODE_PATH uniqueness

8.3.3. Other uniqueness types

8.4. Bidirectional traversals

8.5. Summary

Chapter 9. Spring Data Neo4j

9.1. Where does SDN fit in?

9.1.1. What is Spring and how is SDN related to it?

9.1.2. What is SDN good for (and not good for)?

9.1.3. Where to get SDN

9.1.4. Where to get more information

9.2. Modeling with SDN

9.2.1. Initial POJO domain modeling

9.2.2. Annotating the domain model

9.2.3. Modeling node entities

9.2.4. Modeling relationship entities

9.2.5. Modeling relationships between node entities

9.3. Accessing and persisting entities

9.3.1. Supporting Spring configuration

9.3.2. Neo4jTemplate class

9.3.3. Repositories

9.3.4. Other options

9.4. Object-graph mapping options

9.4.1. Simple mapping

9.4.2. Advanced mapping based on AspectJ

9.4.3. Object mapping summary

9.5. Performing queries and traversals

9.5.1. Annotated queries

9.5.2. Dynamically derived queries

9.5.3. Traversals

9.6. Summary

3. Neo4j in Production

Chapter 10. Neo4j: embedded versus server mode

10.1. Usage modes overview

10.2. Embedded mode

10.2.1. Core Java integration

10.2.2. Other JVM-based integration

10.3. Server mode

10.3.1. Neo4j server overview

10.3.2. Using the fine-grained Neo4j server REST API

10.3.3. Using the Cypher Neo4j server REST API endpoint

10.3.4. Using a remote client library to help access the Neo4j server

10.3.5. Server plugins and unmanaged extensions

10.4. Weighing the options

10.4.1. Architectural considerations

10.4.2. Performance considerations

10.4.3. Other considerations

10.5. Getting the most out of the server mode

10.5.1. Avoid fine-grained operations

10.5.2. Using Cypher

10.5.3. Server plugins

10.5.4. Unmanaged extensions

10.5.5. Streaming REST API

10.6. Summary

Chapter 11. Neo4j in production

11.1. High-level Neo4j architecture

11.1.1. Setting the scene ...

11.1.2. Disks

11.1.3. Store files

11.1.4. Neo4j caches

11.1.5. Transaction logs and recoverability

11.1.6. Programmatic APIs

11.2. Neo4j High Availability (HA)

11.2.1. Neo4j clustering overview

11.2.2. Setting up a Neo4j cluster

11.2.3. Replication—reading and writing strategies

11.2.4. Cache sharding

11.2.5. HA summary

11.3. Backups

11.3.1. Offline backups

11.3.2. Online backups

11.3.3. Restoring from backup

11.4. Topics we couldn’t cover but that you should be aware of

11.4.1. Security

11.4.2. Monitoring

11.5. Summary

11.6. Final thoughts

Appendix A. Installing Neo4j server

A.1. Installing and configuring a single Neo4j server

A.2. Neo4j browser

A.3. Neo4j Web Admin Console

Appendix B. Setting up and running the sample code

B.1. Setting up your environment

Download the sample code

Install JDK (Oracle SE 7)

Install Maven (3.0.5+)

B.2. Running the demos and samples

General instructions

Chapter 10 instructions

Appendix C. Setting up your project to use SDN

C.1. Maven configuration

C.2. Spring configuration

Core XML configuration

Repository configuration

Appendix D. Getting more help

Index

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Listings