Object & graphSample
Property graph
Nodes with labels and properties, joined by typed, directed relationships that carry properties too. Built for questions that follow connections.
Try this
- 01Run “What did Ana’s friends buy that she didn’t?”: a recommendation is just a three-hop walk.
- 02Run the friends-of-friends traversal and imagine the SQL: two self-joins on a friendship table.
- 03Click Chen to see all of their relationships in one place.
Notation
- Node
- An entity (a customer, a product). Can hold any properties.
- Label
- The node’s type, written :Customer. A node can have several.
- Relationship
- A directed, named connection such as BOUGHT or FRIENDS_WITH. A first-class record, not a foreign key.
- Property
- Key-value data on a node or a relationship (price, since).
- Traversal
- Walking from node to node along relationships. Each hop costs the same no matter how big the graph is.
Use it when
- Recommendations, fraud rings, network and lineage analysis
- Relationships that are many-to-many and many hops deep
- Schemas that evolve often
Avoid it when
- Aggregating large volumes (sums, group by): use a columnar store
- Simple lookups by key