February 2013 Summaries

We are excited to be sponsoring Heroku’s Waza 2013, showcasing the Waza-Twitter graph at the Neo4j lounge. Heroku and Neo4j have a long history of collaboration, with Neo4j provided as a Heroku add-on and joint meetups and hackathons in the past. We will display the Waza Twitter graph on various monitors throughout the venue, allowing attendees to visualize conversations and connections in real-time. Our contribution reflects Neo4j's focus on value in relationships, highlighting how graph databases can integrate with projects, events, and people. We will also present an interactive Zen coffee table at our booth, where attendees can draw or program something and see it appear in the sand.

Neo Technology has joined the Linked Data Benchmark Council (LDBC), a three-year EU-funded research project aimed at creating comprehensive performance benchmarks for graph databases. The LDBC's goal is to encourage the advancement of graph database technologies by providing targets for performance and functionality, while also establishing an independent authority for auditing and verifying benchmark results. Neo Technology has been actively involved in the project, hosting technical user community meetings, including the first meeting held in Barcelona in November 2012, which featured presentations from over 10 academic and commercial users of graph/RDF databases. The second TUC meeting will be held in Munich on April 22-23, while the third meeting is scheduled for the second half of this year. Neo Technology has also given a talk at FOSDEM entitled "The Linked Data Benchmark Council" and is contributing to the development of the LDBC graph database benchmark, which aims to create a comprehensive benchmark based on the social network use-case. The project involves collaboration with partners such as OpenLink, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and the University of Amsterdam, and Neo Technology is helping shape the first LDBC graph database benchmark using its experience in developing Neo4j and feedback from the Neo4j community.

The author of the blog post, Peter Bell, reflects on his experience creating a one-day training class for Neo4j, a graph database. He notes that Neo4j has come a long way since its inception and is now accessible to developers with diverse backgrounds. Cypher, Neo4j's query language, allows users to write simple and declarative queries to traverse graphs and gain insights into data. The author highlights the power of Cypher and its similarity to SQL for graphs. He also mentions that graph databases are increasingly being used in various industries such as recommendation systems, route planning, access control, and bioinformatics. The training class was a success, with attendees feeling confident in their ability to build non-mission critical apps using Neo4j. Peter Bell's experience demonstrates the growing applicability of graph databases and the importance of accessible tutorials like his.

The Neo4j community, led by Michael and myself, recently attended a series of events including Meetups in Delft and Antwerp, and the main event at FOSDEM in Brussels. At these meetups, we observed strong interest from the community regarding ease of use, bigger data handling, and visualizations for Neo4j, as well as topics like impact analysis in SOA architectures and spatial capabilities. The GraphDevroom was a huge success with 80-100 attendees listening to talks about Neo4j usage, and we were impressed by the enthusiasm and expertise of the community. We also learned about various projects related to Neo4j, including Linkurious, Open Citation, and Squire, which showcased innovative applications of the technology. Overall, it was a fantastic experience meeting so many like-minded individuals and seeing the potential of Neo4j in various fields.