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  3. Neo4j graph database - any experiences?

Neo4j graph database - any experiences?

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  • E Espen Harlinn

    Have a look at OQGRAPH Engine for MariaDB[^] From what you're writing this sounds like what you're looking for: The Open Query GRAPH computation engine, or OQGRAPH as the engine itself is called, allows you to handle hierarchies (tree structures) but also complex graphs (nodes having many connections in several directions). [^]

    Espen Harlinn Chief Architect - Powel AS Projects promoting programming in "natural language" are intrinsically doomed to fail. Edsger W.Dijkstra

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    Marc Clifton
    wrote on last edited by
    #11

    Espen Harlinn wrote:

    Have a look at OQGRAPH Engine for MariaDB[^]

    Wow, that does look very very promising. Much appreciated! Marc

    Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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    • J Jorgen Andersson

      If I remember my math correctly, you can have a graph that has null edge, but not null vertice. So if neo4j is done correctly, you can't do it. Depending on your definition of correctly. And as for there not being any semantic databases, did you really search? Maybe I'm misunderstanding your perception of semantic database, but there seems to be several out there. Amongst others, Oracle supports semantic modeling (and graphs and ontologies) as features of Oracle spatial[^], if you can afford it. :rolleyes: BTW there's a .Net version called Neo4net if you don't want to get dirty with Java.

      Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello[^]

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      Marc Clifton
      wrote on last edited by
      #12

      Jörgen Andersson wrote:

      but not null vertice.

      I would still have vertices, it's just that some nodes are abstract (like abstract classes) and require a "is a kind of" relationship to another node, perhaps abstract, perhaps with some concrete properties.

      Jörgen Andersson wrote:

      as features of Oracle spatial[^], if you can afford it.

      I'm staying away from RDF and OWL as it's silly complex for structures that are more (and different) than just subject-predicate-object triples. This actually excludes a lot of graph databases, as about 50% of them seem to be tailored to working with RDF triples (there's a long long list on wikipedia, I'm of course also looking for something that hopefully works painlessly with .NET.) Marc

      Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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      • M Marc Clifton

        I've been looking at graph database technology and was wondering if anyone here had any concrete experience with Neo4j[^]. A specific question that I have is that it seems that graph databases (though maybe it's specific to Neo4j) are "fact" oriented -- in other words, nodes are typically concrete facts. What I'm looking for is a graph database that supports abstract concepts, and this manifests as a node with no properties, only connections. Why do I want this? Because I am looking at how to persist the structure (semantics) of the data as well the data itself. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "semantic database" - basically, a merging of a relational database, semantics, and graphs. Thanks in advance! Marc

        Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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        roks nicolas
        wrote on last edited by
        #13

        Did you look at orientdb... it seems to be a mix between a document db and a graph db and a relational db

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        • R roks nicolas

          Did you look at orientdb... it seems to be a mix between a document db and a graph db and a relational db

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          Marc Clifton
          wrote on last edited by
          #14

          Member 3752561 wrote:

          Did you look at orientdb... it seems to be a mix between a document db and a graph db and a relational db

          No, I hadn't. Thanks for providing the link. I'm impressed with their clean documentation and simple SQL-like query language. Much easier to understand than Neo4j's syntax! Marc

          Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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          • M Marc Clifton

            I've been looking at graph database technology and was wondering if anyone here had any concrete experience with Neo4j[^]. A specific question that I have is that it seems that graph databases (though maybe it's specific to Neo4j) are "fact" oriented -- in other words, nodes are typically concrete facts. What I'm looking for is a graph database that supports abstract concepts, and this manifests as a node with no properties, only connections. Why do I want this? Because I am looking at how to persist the structure (semantics) of the data as well the data itself. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "semantic database" - basically, a merging of a relational database, semantics, and graphs. Thanks in advance! Marc

            Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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            vaderjm
            wrote on last edited by
            #15

            I have used neo4j in a couple large projects and absolutely love it. I still use mysql for transaction data (i.e. accounting, it's just more practical), and mongodb for centralizing document stores (images, uploads, css/js files), but for what you described neo would work just fine. Keep in mind you can also apply labels to the nodes to allow you to query the data in a more meaningful way. Neo4j isn't the end all/be all, but it's very useful for me, not to mention because of it's nature of related nodes, super quick for the data extraction that I do.

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            • M Marc Clifton

              Member 3752561 wrote:

              Did you look at orientdb... it seems to be a mix between a document db and a graph db and a relational db

              No, I hadn't. Thanks for providing the link. I'm impressed with their clean documentation and simple SQL-like query language. Much easier to understand than Neo4j's syntax! Marc

              Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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              roks nicolas
              wrote on last edited by
              #16

              i think the biggest problem for this style of project (orientdb, neo4j, mongodb etc) is the fact that client are develop and maintain by external developper (now mongodb have internal dev for each port of client and that s a very cool thing) if you look at the binary client for orientdb in .net, the last release is 2 years ago .... I think if you choose oriendb , you must do your own client.

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              • M Marc Clifton

                I've been looking at graph database technology and was wondering if anyone here had any concrete experience with Neo4j[^]. A specific question that I have is that it seems that graph databases (though maybe it's specific to Neo4j) are "fact" oriented -- in other words, nodes are typically concrete facts. What I'm looking for is a graph database that supports abstract concepts, and this manifests as a node with no properties, only connections. Why do I want this? Because I am looking at how to persist the structure (semantics) of the data as well the data itself. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "semantic database" - basically, a merging of a relational database, semantics, and graphs. Thanks in advance! Marc

                Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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                computer_nerd
                wrote on last edited by
                #17

                I've been looking at Neo4J recently. I'm not quite sure what you want to achieve but if it helps, individual nodes and relationships can have whatever properties you want or none at all (the equivalent of properties in a sql database would be fields that are part of the hard-coded structure of the table and so are fixed even if they are optional). You can group nodes by assigning labels to them eg "Person". Nodes that have the same label don't have to share the same properties and a node can have as many properties as you like within practical limits. Labels help you to search for nodes or relationships that have something in common. I generally like this kind of tagging because you can use tags to group different objects in different ways which is more fluid than trying to impose a structure that isn't supposed to change. If you download the Neo4J community edition, it comes with a built-in web server that enables you to try out queries in your browser and see a visual representation of the graph

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                • M Marc Clifton

                  Espen Harlinn wrote:

                  Have a look at OQGRAPH Engine for MariaDB[^]

                  Wow, that does look very very promising. Much appreciated! Marc

                  Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

                  E Offline
                  E Offline
                  Espen Harlinn
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #18

                  If you try it out, I'd like to know what you think about it. I'm probably going to take a close look at it, but it's always nice to have a second opinion ;-)

                  Espen Harlinn Chief Architect - Powel AS Projects promoting programming in "natural language" are intrinsically doomed to fail. Edsger W.Dijkstra

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                  • M Marc Clifton

                    I've been looking at graph database technology and was wondering if anyone here had any concrete experience with Neo4j[^]. A specific question that I have is that it seems that graph databases (though maybe it's specific to Neo4j) are "fact" oriented -- in other words, nodes are typically concrete facts. What I'm looking for is a graph database that supports abstract concepts, and this manifests as a node with no properties, only connections. Why do I want this? Because I am looking at how to persist the structure (semantics) of the data as well the data itself. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "semantic database" - basically, a merging of a relational database, semantics, and graphs. Thanks in advance! Marc

                    Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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                    Plamen Dragiyski
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #19

                    I do not know if I understand what you want, but how do you use such a database. If the DB engine do not use concept of internal structure of the node, it cannot select/filter a concrete node, unless you already selected it. So the DB engine could do only one type of operation - load all database in memory. No indexes could be build without inner structure of nodes in the graph. To achieve performance for your model I suggest ArangoDB. In a graph view, you could achieve simple graph by just adding "empty documents" into the database with the overflow of a single hash (ID) for every node and two hashes ("_from" and "_to") for every edge. As for Neo4j I'm almost sure it can be used with nodes/edges without properties.

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                    • M Marc Clifton

                      I've been looking at graph database technology and was wondering if anyone here had any concrete experience with Neo4j[^]. A specific question that I have is that it seems that graph databases (though maybe it's specific to Neo4j) are "fact" oriented -- in other words, nodes are typically concrete facts. What I'm looking for is a graph database that supports abstract concepts, and this manifests as a node with no properties, only connections. Why do I want this? Because I am looking at how to persist the structure (semantics) of the data as well the data itself. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a "semantic database" - basically, a merging of a relational database, semantics, and graphs. Thanks in advance! Marc

                      Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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                      Peter Od
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #20

                      What you need is a mature, full-featured, hi-performance object database management system ("ODBMS"). Most of the No-SQL options are missing features for what you want to accomplish. SQL databases are a poor solution for modeling graph data structures (or any highly complex db schema). Checkout the top performing database in this comparision of leading database systems: http://velocitydb.com/Compare.aspx[^] The features of VelocityDb are available in stand-alone or server versions: http://velocitydb.com/Features.aspx No-SQL databases just don't have such rich feature sets. And the open source VelocityGraph add-on link is at top of the home page: www.VelocityDb.com I've been using VelocityDb after many years with Versant and after looking at heavy-weight ODBMS systems such as Gemstone. I'm very happy with VelocityDb. My class hierarchy IS the database schema. Update your classes in your code, you've just updated your db schema.

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                      • P Peter Od

                        What you need is a mature, full-featured, hi-performance object database management system ("ODBMS"). Most of the No-SQL options are missing features for what you want to accomplish. SQL databases are a poor solution for modeling graph data structures (or any highly complex db schema). Checkout the top performing database in this comparision of leading database systems: http://velocitydb.com/Compare.aspx[^] The features of VelocityDb are available in stand-alone or server versions: http://velocitydb.com/Features.aspx No-SQL databases just don't have such rich feature sets. And the open source VelocityGraph add-on link is at top of the home page: www.VelocityDb.com I've been using VelocityDb after many years with Versant and after looking at heavy-weight ODBMS systems such as Gemstone. I'm very happy with VelocityDb. My class hierarchy IS the database schema. Update your classes in your code, you've just updated your db schema.

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                        roks nicolas
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #21

                        licence per developper : 400$ and Deployment licenses/royalty "Our runtime royalty is determined on a case by case basis. We would like you to suggest a pricing model that fits your business. It might be a share of your profits, a fixed amount per deployment or something else. We are very flexible but we do need revenue to maintain development, support and pay our staff." so not a fixed price.... we don t know how much we will pay when we'll go in production.... licence per developper is not so high (if the performance are here) and we can use it for free for trial usage for less than 3 user but doesn't know how much we will pay or how much we will need to tax our customer to install the db is unacceptable, specialy if we make a startup or little business...

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                        • R roks nicolas

                          licence per developper : 400$ and Deployment licenses/royalty "Our runtime royalty is determined on a case by case basis. We would like you to suggest a pricing model that fits your business. It might be a share of your profits, a fixed amount per deployment or something else. We are very flexible but we do need revenue to maintain development, support and pay our staff." so not a fixed price.... we don t know how much we will pay when we'll go in production.... licence per developper is not so high (if the performance are here) and we can use it for free for trial usage for less than 3 user but doesn't know how much we will pay or how much we will need to tax our customer to install the db is unacceptable, specialy if we make a startup or little business...

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                          Peter Od
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #22

                          The database engine is the foundation of an entire software project. Best your select the right horse to ride at the outset. Developer time savings, code re-use and saving objects or graph-nodes with simple code (no transforming your objects or nodes into rows-and-columns or a structure required by the persistence engine) pay for the minimal license costs. If you checked-out the performance comparisons, you'll realize you can get away with a fraction of the hardware / server costs for this kind of database. Check how VelocityDb on a $1,000 Costco PC compares against $1 million+ hardware with Oracle. It may be worth your while to get a price quote for your specific business case and revenue model, so you can make an informed decision. I've been in software since 1981 and have reviewed many, many data persistence schemes. This one has saved me time, money and mis-steps. But, I don't know the specifics of your project.

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                          • P Peter Od

                            The database engine is the foundation of an entire software project. Best your select the right horse to ride at the outset. Developer time savings, code re-use and saving objects or graph-nodes with simple code (no transforming your objects or nodes into rows-and-columns or a structure required by the persistence engine) pay for the minimal license costs. If you checked-out the performance comparisons, you'll realize you can get away with a fraction of the hardware / server costs for this kind of database. Check how VelocityDb on a $1,000 Costco PC compares against $1 million+ hardware with Oracle. It may be worth your while to get a price quote for your specific business case and revenue model, so you can make an informed decision. I've been in software since 1981 and have reviewed many, many data persistence schemes. This one has saved me time, money and mis-steps. But, I don't know the specifics of your project.

                            R Offline
                            R Offline
                            roks nicolas
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #23

                            i've just sayed that the price of this solution is not fixed. that's it. I haven't said it s not the right tools... by the way the post of Member10610008 seems to "promote" this solution hardly... even if he don't know the specifics of marc's project. "What you need is a mature, full-featured, hi-performance object database management system ("ODBMS")" .... mouais...

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                            0
                            • P Peter Od

                              What you need is a mature, full-featured, hi-performance object database management system ("ODBMS"). Most of the No-SQL options are missing features for what you want to accomplish. SQL databases are a poor solution for modeling graph data structures (or any highly complex db schema). Checkout the top performing database in this comparision of leading database systems: http://velocitydb.com/Compare.aspx[^] The features of VelocityDb are available in stand-alone or server versions: http://velocitydb.com/Features.aspx No-SQL databases just don't have such rich feature sets. And the open source VelocityGraph add-on link is at top of the home page: www.VelocityDb.com I've been using VelocityDb after many years with Versant and after looking at heavy-weight ODBMS systems such as Gemstone. I'm very happy with VelocityDb. My class hierarchy IS the database schema. Update your classes in your code, you've just updated your db schema.

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                              M Offline
                              Marc Clifton
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #24

                              Thanks, I'll take a look at ODBMS's, but Velocity is not an option as this is for an open source project and I'm looking for something that has more flexible license terms. Marc

                              Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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                              • R roks nicolas

                                i've just sayed that the price of this solution is not fixed. that's it. I haven't said it s not the right tools... by the way the post of Member10610008 seems to "promote" this solution hardly... even if he don't know the specifics of marc's project. "What you need is a mature, full-featured, hi-performance object database management system ("ODBMS")" .... mouais...

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                                Marc Clifton
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #25

                                Member 10610008 and Peter.Od is the same person (he changed his username) - and it seems like he's promoting a solution in a very "sales-ish" way. I almost hit the "report spam" button, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, even though he has only ever posted 3 messages, two of which are the ones on this thread. Marc

                                Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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                                • M Marc Clifton

                                  Thanks, I'll take a look at ODBMS's, but Velocity is not an option as this is for an open source project and I'm looking for something that has more flexible license terms. Marc

                                  Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Higher Order Programming

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                                  roks nicolas
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #26

                                  :)

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