Embracing Open Data: The 5-Minute Interview with Nur Aini Rakhmawati


“So I encourage my students to get the certificate in Neo4j. It will be useful for them to get a job, especially in databases. And the second thing is, the awesome thing about Neo4j is how this database is preferred, especially with graph embedding,” said Nur Aini Rakhmawati, Associate Professor, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh.

In this week’s five-minute interview (conducted remotely), Graphie Award Winner Nur Aini Rakhmawati, Graph Community MVP Asia, discusses how Neo4j’s graph technology helps her in her many projects with her students.



How did you get started with Neo4j?


I started my Ph.D. with data, especially Indian data. And then I focused on reciprocal data. Then, when I came back from my Ph.D., I established a system we called open data. So we focus on how to produce a graph for the halal portal, which allows more people to consume the data and also makes this data more machine readable.

There is a huge amount because we have been integrating a lot of data sets. And the initial state we only obtain in the data from the Indonesia halal portal.

Feature Image Nur Aini


This is from my school, Ahmadiyya Muslim in Indonesia. But after that, we think that Muslim is not only in Indonesia, but from around the world. So we integrate, we crawl the data from the different halal certification bodies.

So right now we’ve already added seven organizations. And then we think that how we come up with this data, we not only produce the data and make it possible for people to collect the data from us and do some things outside from this data, but we think that we need to further analyze what is inside of the data.

Then at two years ago, in 2018, I discovered Neo4j and then Neo4j already profiled a cool things such as, like, the algorithms, especially for the graph, and then we think that we can make something different, it’s not on the usually when we create algorithms from our the graph data, it’s not integrated, all the things like in your budget, they have room for visualization, and then we can see it just a bit of cheaper language so we can see all the data inside of the data. So that’s the core of the Neo4j that I founded.

How did you get involved with the Neo4j community?


In our department, we have the data technology course for the undergraduate students and for the post-graduate students in that course, we have a lot of outlines for the students that they have to have capability to learn SQL databases not only our DBMS database, so we learn about the column key database, a document database and so on and also craft database.

As you know, the famous graph right now is Neo4j. So, I encourage them to learn Neo4j during the course. So I think that we can also ask the people to join with us to know what is the emerging technology in databases, especially in SQL and then I saw that Neo4j has even then called the crafter in 2019.

So I apply for that. When I see that there’s something teachable in anything so I think that’s good for my students and the people who come here and okay, then we organize that info with my students in that.

Then if when we talk about the how use the Neo4j to analyze the general election in Indonesia, especially for legislative candidate, what the scoreboard thinks, because we think that we would like to reflect the community, between the candidate, we think that the candidate could be half strong with a zip between, especially for the family or for the when they are born or anything.

So, and then we also participate in YouTube and social media. That’s some people coming not only from my students, so that’s good things for the influencer. And then we would like to expose what we do in television as well, I mean, for the local television, but what is our findings? Use Neo4j.

What is your favorite part of working with Neo4j?


The buffering part, especially because I’m a lecturer the first 40 things is the free certificate. If you take the certificate in Neo4j, it’s free.

I encourage my students to get this certificate. So it will be useful for them to get the job, especially in databases. And the second thing is, the awesome thing about Neo4j is how this database is preferred, especially in the emerging new algorithm, for example. Two years ago they started with the graph embedding, but right now in the Neo4j the last notice developer for Neo4j already support the graph embedding.

So there’s a lot of algorithms already supported as well. Your data, you just click it even when you don’t know about the Cypher language, for example, so you just click it, and then you find something. I mean, not only do you have to type first, but you can also use the freestyle initiation of the Neo4j to find the connection listed between the nodes, and between the nodes and a relation and the properties.

What do you think the future holds for graph technology?


Okay, so right now, we started use the Neo4j for graph embedding as well. It’s not only to make an entity resolution between the halal product. And then we use this entity resolution for increasing the value for an entity.

So we can make use of it for the search engine as well. So the coolest thing right now, not only to the draft is for the testing communities to calculate the centrality. Also, now we can use that for the big data, which can be the input for the machine learning or for deep learning.

Usually, it’s difficult for us to see how we can use this graph to process artificial intelligence, but right now, more and more people in the graph database space are already supporting it.

Want to share about your Neo4j project in a future 5-Minute Interview? Drop us a line at content@neo4j.com