Chapter 3. Getting Started with Neo4j

In this chapter, we will be taking a much closer look at the real subject of this book, that is, learning Neo4j—the world's leading graph database. In this chapter, we will be going through and familiarizing ourselves with the database management system so that we can start using it in the following chapters with real-world models and use cases.

We will discuss the following topics in this chapter:

• Key concepts and characteristics of Neo4j

• Neo4j's sweet spot use cases

• Neo4j's licensing model

• Installing Neo4j

• Using Neo4j in the cloud

Let's start with the first topic straightaway.

Neo4j – key concepts and characteristics

Before we dive into the details of Neo4j, let's take a look at some of the key characteristics of Neo4j specifically as a graph database management system. Hopefully, this will immediately point out and help you get to grips with some of the key strengths as well.

Built for graphs, from the ground up

Like many open source projects and many open source NoSQL database management systems, Neo4j too came into existence for very specific reasons. Scratching the itch, as this is sometimes called. Grassroots developers who want to solve a problem and are struggling to do so with traditional technology stacks, decide to take a radical, new-found approach. That's what the Neo4j founders did early on in the 21st century—they built something to solve a problem for a particular media company in order to better manage media assets.

In the early days, Neo4j was not a full-on graph database management system—it was more like a graph library that people could use in...

Installing Neo4j

In this section, we will take you through the first couple of steps that you need to take to get started with Neo4j. These steps are quite a bit different on different platforms, therefore we will be going through the different options one by one and looking at the common steps. For most, this will be a simple step—but it's an important one that we cannot afford to skip.

Installing Neo4j on Windows

Like on any platform, installing Neo4j starts with downloading the latest version from the Neo4j website: http://www.Neo4j.org/download is where the most recent versions can be found.

Note

Currently, interfacing with Neo4j is done best with a webkit-based browser, such as Chrome (which is the browser that we will be using for this section), on all platforms.

Download Neo4j for windows

Neo4j Community Edition offers an excellent starting point for your exploration of the Neo4j ecosystem, and on Windows, the download process initiated provides you with an executable Windows installer...

Using Neo4j in a cloud environment

In this section, we are going to address a third and alternative way of getting started with the Neo4j graph database management system, that is, by using a cloud solution. As it turns out, you can try out the power of the database solution without even having to go through the previously mentioned steps of installing the product on an operating system of your own. You can just use a "graph as a service" solution; there are multiple providers out there. At the time of writing this, you can use solutions from the following:

• GrapheneDB.com

• Heroku

• GraphAlchemist

• ElastX

• Of course, a "roll your own" solution on Amazon Web Services would work just as nicely

Therefore, we are going to explain and illustrate some of the principles of a cloud-based deployment model and how you can use it to get started. To do so, we will be using the GrapheneDB platform—probably one of the most simple, elegant, and powerful solutions out there.

Getting started with the cloud platform consists...

Test Questions

Q1. Neo4j is an ACID database.

1. True.

2. False.

Q2. The Enterprise Edition of Neo4j is available in which of the following license formats:

1. A closed-source, proprietary license, to be purchased from Neo Technology.

2. An open source license, the Apache 2 License.

3. An open source license, the Affero GNU Public license.

4. A dual license—either the open source Affero GNU Public license or the open source Neo Technology Commercial License to be purchased from Neo Technology.

Q3. Neo4j is only available on Linux/Unix/OS X based systems.

1. True.

2. False.

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the background material for Neo4j specifically, as the world's leading graph database and the topic of the rest of this book. This included an overview of Neo4j's specific implementation of the graph database concepts, its sweet spot use cases, its licensing model, and its installation and deployment considerations. This should give us the required background to get going with the hands-on part of this book. This is what we will start to address now, and the next chapter will help you to model your data in the right way that is fit for Neo4j.