Got a little graph database in you? Then you may be a “graphista” in the eyes of graph database developer Neo Technology, which yesterday unveiled a new release of its Neo4j graph database that it says will usher in the era of mainstream graph processing.
Graph databases are prominently used by social media companies, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, to determine connections among vast numbers of users. But the ability of graph databases to model and query connected data has uses beyond social media, including accelerating the development of applications in customer service and even bioinformatics. With the launch of Neo4j 2.0 this week, the company hopes to take graph databases to the next level, and to enable even non-technical people to begin using and developing with graph database technology. Major new features include the addition of labels to the Neo4j schema. Labels will enable developers to tell the database more about the data, and speed up development. An update to the Cypher query language in Neo4j 2.0 will allow developers to develop applications with one-tenth of the coding that would be required in a traditional SQL database. The company also added the Neo4j Browser to provide an interactive experience with the graph, including rapid prototyping of Cypher queries performing visual data discovery.
Keywords: Neo4j 2.0