Preface

Graph issues are some of the most common problems in computer programming, and have been since the early days. Back then, hierarchy trees, access control lists, and mapping tables were built, typically, in code. When it came time to store the graphs, programmers transformed them into tables and used the relational database as underlying storage. We had to do a lot of plumbing to save the most basic graph data, but there was no other option—until graph databases, with Neo4j leading the parade, entered the scene.

Neo4j started its journey more than a decade ago, with the first official version, the 1.0 release, coming out in 2010, and the more recent 2.0 release coming out in December 2013. Most of us have been involved with actively using Neo4j and watching it evolve over this period on various projects for clients. The hype and excitement around graph databases, and Neo4j in particular, have been gaining more and more traction, with many people and companies realizing that Neo4j is uniquely placed in the graph database space to provide a robust and solid solution capable of solving complex and challenging, interconnected business problems.

It is with great pleasure that we tried to distill much of this real-world experience and knowledge into this hands-on book in a way that lays solid foundations and then builds on those to help you get up and running with Neo4j as soon as possible.