Graph Databases, Early Release

201 Pages·2013·4.897 MB·English

by  Ian Robinson, Jim Webber, Emil Eifrem

www.it-ebooks.info
Graph Databases
Ian Robinson, Jim Webber, and Emil Eifrem
www.it-ebooks.info
Graph Databases
by Ian Robinson, Jim Webber, and Emil Eifrem
Copyright © 2013 Neo Technology, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are
also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/
institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [e-mail].
Editors: Mike Loukides and Nathan Jepson Indexer: FIX ME!
Production Editor: Kara Ebrahim Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery
Copyeditor: FIX ME! Interior Designer: David Futato
Proofreader: FIX ME! Illustrator: Robert Romano
June 2013: First Edition
Revision History for the First Edition:
2013-04-11: Early release revision 1
See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781449356262 for release details.
Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly
Media, Inc. !!FILL THIS IN!! and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as
trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trade‐
mark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume
no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained
herein.
ISBN: 978-1-449-35626-2
[?]
www.it-ebooks.info
Table of Contents
Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book 2
What is a Graph? 2
A High Level View of the Graph Space 5
Graph Databases 6
Graph Compute Engines 8
The Power of Graph Databases 10
Performance 10
Flexibility 10
Agility 11
Summary 11
2. Options for Storing Connected Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Relational Databases Lack Relationships 13
NOSQL Databases Also Lack Relationships 16
Graph Databases Embrace Relationships 19
Summary 23
3. Data Modeling with Graphs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Models and Goals 25
The Property Graph Model 26
Querying Graphs: An Introduction to Cypher 27
Cypher Philosophy 27
START 29
MATCH 29
RETURN 30
Other Cypher clauses 30
iii
www.it-ebooks.info
A Comparison of Relational and Graph Modeling 30
Relational Modeling in a Systems Management Domain 31
Graph Modeling in a Systems Management Domain 34
Testing the Model 36
Cross-Domain Models 37
Creating the Shakespeare Graph 40
Beginning a Query 42
Declaring Information Patterns to Find 42
Constraining Matches 44
Processing Results 45
Query Chaining 46
Common Modeling Pitfalls 46
Email Provenance Problem Domain 47
A Sensible First Iteration? 47
Second Time’s the Charm 49
Evolving the Domain 51
Avoiding Anti-Patterns 54
Summary 55
4. Building a Graph Database Application. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Data Modeling 57
Describe the Model in Terms of Your Application’s Needs 57
Nodes for Things, Relationships for Structure 59
Fine-Grained Versus Generic Relationships 59
Model Facts as Nodes 60
Represent Complex Value Types as Nodes 64
Time 64
Iterative and Incremental Development 67
Application Architecture 68
Embedded Versus Server 68
Clustering 73
Load Balancing 74
Testing 76
Test-Driven Data Model Development 76
Performance Testing 82
Capacity Planning 86
Optimization Criteria 87
Performance 87
Redundancy 90
Load 90
5. Graphs in the Real World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
iv | Table of Contents
www.it-ebooks.info
Why Organizations Choose Graph Databases 93
Common Use Cases 94
Social 94
Recommendations 95
Geo 96
Master Data Management 96
Network and Data Center Management 97
Authorization and Access Control (Communications) 98
Real-World Examples 99
Social Recommendations (Professional Social Network) 99
Authorization and Access Control 107
Geo (Logistics) 113
6. Graph Database Internals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Native Graph Processing 125
Native Graph Storage 128
Programmatic APIs 135
Kernel API 136
Core (or “Beans”) API 136
Traversal API 138
Non-Functional Characteristics 139
Transactions 140
Recoverability 141
Availability 142
Scale 144
Summary 147
7. Predictive Analysis with Graph Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Depth- and Breadth-First Search 149
Path-Finding with Dijkstra’s Algorithm 150
The A* Algorithm 157
Graph Theory and Predictive Modeling 158
Triadic Closures 159
Structural Balance 160
Local Bridges 163
Summary 165
A. NOSQL Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Table of Contents | v
www.it-ebooks.info
www.it-ebooks.info
Preface
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.
Constant width
Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements
such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables,
statements, and keywords.
Constant width bold
Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
Constant width italic
Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values deter‐
mined by context.
This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.
This icon indicates a warning or caution.
Using Code Examples
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, if this book includes code
examples, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You
vii
www.it-ebooks.info
do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion
of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this
book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from
O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and
quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount
of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require per‐
mission.
We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title,
author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Book Title by Some Author (O’Reilly).
Copyright 2012 Some Copyright Holder, 978-0-596-xxxx-x.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above,
feel free to contact us at [e-mail].
Safari® Books Online
Safari Books Online is an on-demand digital library that delivers ex‐
pert content in both book and video form from the world’s leading
authors in technology and business.
Technology professionals, software developers, web designers, and business and crea‐
tive professionals use Safari Books Online as their primary resource for research, prob‐
lem solving, learning, and certification training.
Safari Books Online offers a range of product mixes and pricing programs for organi‐
zations, government agencies, and individuals. Subscribers have access to thousands of
books, training videos, and prepublication manuscripts in one fully searchable database
from publishers like O’Reilly Media, Prentice Hall Professional, Addison-Wesley Pro‐
fessional, Microsoft Press, Sams, Que, Peachpit Press, Focal Press, Cisco Press, John
Wiley & Sons, Syngress, Morgan Kaufmann, IBM Redbooks, Packt, Adobe Press, FT
Press, Apress, Manning, New Riders, McGraw-Hill, Jones & Bartlett, Course Technol‐
ogy, and dozens more. For more information about Safari Books Online, please visit us
online.
How to Contact Us
Please address comments and questions concerning this book to the publisher:
O’Reilly Media, Inc.
1005 Gravenstein Highway North
Sebastopol, CA 95472
800-998-9938 (in the United States or Canada)
707-829-0515 (international or local)
viii | Preface
www.it-ebooks.info
707-829-0104 (fax)
We have a web page for this book, where we list errata, examples, and any additional
information. You can access this page at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/<catalog page>.
To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send email to bookques
[e-mail].
For more information about our books, courses, conferences, and news, see our website
at http://www.oreilly.com.
Find us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/oreilly
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oreillymedia
Watch us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/oreillymedia
Acknowledgments
Preface | ix
www.it-ebooks.info