Explore Neo4j

The Movie Graph

GraphAcademy has created a Neo4j sandbox instance for you. The graph contains a dataset of movies and people.

In this lesson, you will explore the graph and use Cypher to query it.

Nodes

The graph contains nodes labeled Movie and Person.

Neo4j includes a query language called Cypher that allows you to query the graph.

Run the following Cypher query to return the first 50 Movie nodes in the graph:

MATCH (m:Movie) RETURN m LIMIT 50

You will see the Movie nodes returned as a graph.

Click on a node to see it’s properties. Movie nodes have properties like title, released, and plot.

Try modifying the query to return Person nodes instead of Movie nodes.

MATCH (p:Person) RETURN p LIMIT 50

All nodes

You can return all the nodes by removing the LIMIT clause. It may take longer to return all the nodes.

MATCH (m:Movie) RETURN m

You can filter the nodes returned by adding a condition to the query. For example, you can filter Movie nodes by the title property.

MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'Toy Story'}) RETURN m

Relationships

The relationships between nodes describe how people are related to movies. For example, Person nodes have ACTED_IN and DIRECTED relationships with Movie nodes.

Run this Cypher query to return the Movie node ‘Hoffa’ and Person nodes with an ACTED_IN relationship to the movie:

MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'Hoffa'})<-[r:ACTED_IN]-(p:Person)
RETURN m, r, p

The movie ‘Hoffa’ is a Movie node with relationships to Person nodes who acted in and directed the movie.

The query doesn’t include the DIRECTED relationship, but it appears in the graph.

Neo4j will also display other relationships between the returned nodes to give a complete view.

View relationships

You can double-click on nodes in the graph to expand their relationships with other nodes.

Properties

Nodes have properties that describe them. For example, Person nodes have properties like name and born, Movie nodes have properties like title and released.

Relationships in Neo4j can also have properties, the ACTED_IN relationship has a role property, storing the person’s role in the movie.

Run the following Cypher to return the movie title and person’s name who acted in the movie “Top Gun”:

MATCH (m:Movie {title: 'Top Gun'})<-[r:ACTED_IN]-(p:Person)
RETURN m.title, p.name

Note how the query returns the data as a table, rather than a graph, of the movie title and person’s name.

Get Neo4j

There are many options to use Neo4j, including a fully hosted cloud solution (AuraDB), local installations, and Docker containers.

In this lesson, you will explore some of these options.

Community and Enterprise Editions

There are two editions of Neo4j to choose from, the Community Edition (CE) and the Enterprise Edition (EE). The Enterprise Edition includes all Community Edition offers, plus extra enterprise requirements such as backups, clustering, and failover capabilities.

The Community Edition is a fully functional edition of Neo4j, suitable for single-instance deployments. It fully supports key Neo4j features, such as ACID-compliant transactions, Cypher, and programming APIs. It is ideal for learning Neo4j, do-it-yourself projects, and applications in small workgroups.

The Enterprise Edition extends the functionality of Community Edition to include key features for performance and scalability, such as a clustering architecture and online backup functionality. Additional security features include role-based access control and LDAP support, for example, Active Directory. It is the choice for production systems with requirements for scale and availability, such as commercial and critical internal solutions.

The Neo4j Editions documentation includes a comparison of the features available in each edition.

AuraDB

AuraDB is a fully managed cloud service that provides a Neo4j database as a service. It is a fully managed, scalable, and secure cloud database service that allows you to focus on building applications without worrying about the operational aspects of managing a database.

You can create a free Neo4j instance at console.neo4j.io and scale it up or down as needed. AuraDB is available in multiple regions, and you can choose the region that best fits your needs.

Installation

You can install Neo4j on most platforms, including Linux, macOS, and Windows. The Neo4j Installation documentation provides detailed instructions for each platform.

In addition, Neo4j provides a Desktop development tool that includes a local installation of Neo4j, a browser-based interface, and a set of tools to help you develop and manage your Neo4j databases. Installation and usage instructions are on the Neo4j Desktop download page.

Cloud deployments

Neo4j’s cloud marketplace listings represent a quick and easy way of getting started with graph databases on the cloud platform of your choice.

You can find more information in the Neo4j Cloud deployments documentation.

Docker

Neo4j provides Docker images for both the Community and Enterprise editions.

The Neo4j Docker documentation provides instructions on how to run, configure, and deploy Neo4j in a Docker container.

Get Started

The right Neo4j deployment option will depend on your requirements. Neo4j AuraDB and Neo4j Desktop provide the easiest way to start with Neo4j.