CareerArc Group resolves slow SQL Server issues with Neo4j

Finding a job in today’s economy can be tough. However there are career opportunities if you know where to look. Your network of friends, family members, colleagues, and acquaintances is the most valuable job search resource you have.With customers like Starbucks and McDonalds, Career Arc Group serves as the next generation of social recruiting applications for job seekers, college students, employers and higher education institutions. Career Arc Group’s applications use popular social networks to connect employers with job and internship seekers. Travlin McCormack, CTO of Career Arc Group, is the lead responsible for developing the particular application Who Do You Know on Facebook.

Scaling Issues

When developing Who Do You Know on Facebook, an application that connects you and your Facebook friends with job opportunities, McCormack began looking for a faster solution to traverse the friend graph.  He originally started with Microsoft SQL Server, but the solution was unacceptable due to the time it took to build and maintain. McCormack’s two issues were the need to scale to the increasing user requests, and the necessity to manage a large amount of interrelated data. Based on recommendations from his own network of CTO colleagues, he integrated Neo4j to address his performance problems with the SQL Server.

Success with Neo4j

Now in production with 10 million nodes, 30 million relationships and 235 million properties, McCormack states that Neo4j successfully solved Career Arc’s technical issues and allowed them to scale and meet their business requirements. McCormack implemented Neo4j to support the value of relationships within Who Do You Know on Facebook. According to McCormack,

“We have only scraped the surface for Neo4j’s capabilities within our organization.”

 

Keywords:  facebook • Social Networks • SQL Server