Book

For much of the first half of 2014, I spent a lot of time writing an introductory book on Neo4j. Published by Packt and available as an ebook and hardcopy, it is supposed to be a good entry point for people who want to learn more about the wonderful world of Graph Databases.

About This Book

• Get acquainted with graph database systems and apply them in real-world use cases
• Get started with Neo4j, a unique NOSQL database system that focuses on tackling data complexity
• A practical guide filled with sample queries, installation procedures, and useful pointers to other information sources

Who This Book Is For

This book is for developers who want an alternative way to store and process data within their applications. No previous graph database experience is required; however, some basic database knowledge will help you understand the concepts more easily.

In Detail

Learning Neo4j provides you with a step-by-step approach of adopting Neo4j, the world's leading graph database. This book includes a lot of background information, helps you grasp the fundamental concepts behind this radical new way of dealing with connected data, and will give you lots of examples of use cases and environments where a graph database would be a great fit.

Starting with a brief introduction to graph theory, this book will show you the advantages of using graph databases. Following on from that, you will be introduced to Neo4j and you will be shown how to install Neo4j on various operating systems. You will then be shown how you can model and import your data into Neo4j.

This book has two use case examples that will show you how to model and implement a graph in Neo4j by analyzing a user case, and analyze the impact a change has on a process or a system. You will also gain an insight into graph visualisation options for Neo4j and discover external sources where you can learn more about Neo4j.

Hands-on Use Case Examples

All the use case examples can be replayed at your own pace in your own local Neo4j server. I have put them all on this Github Gist. In total there are three use case examples that have been developed:

• Chapter 6: Recommendations with Neo4j;
• Chapter 7, example 1: Impact Analysis with Neo4j;
• Chapter 7, example 2: Impact Simulation with Neo4j.

Each of the gists has two parts:

1. A part where we create the graph. You should copy and past these into the Neo4j Shell.
2. A part where we query the graph. You should explore those in the Neo4j Browser web interface.

Hope this is useful.

Where to buy and/or download it

• On the Packt website.
• On Amazon's Kindle store.

You can also get the free ebook version through Neo Technology, from this link.

Any feedback on the book, please let me know - would love to chat.

Cheers

Rik

About the New Version

In October 2017, Jérôme Baton updated the book for PACKT Publishers, and tried to assist him in the review process - with very mixed results because of my lack of time to really do a good job at it. Nevertheless, I think Jérôme's work deserves to be read and seen out there - and you should check out the new version over here. I think you will not regret it.