Ruthvik

Database Management Using Neo4j

Neo4j is a database management tool on the cloud. It is an automated, visualizable, graph based tool that can process queries on complex connections with ease and speed. It stores the properties as key-value pairs. We communicate with the database through queries written in a declarative language called Cipher. The tool is user friendly and visually intuitive to operate. It is an open-source project created by Emil Eifrem in 2007 using Java.

We, as a team of 12, built a telephone directory database using mySQL in the Databases course (CS 432) offered in Spring 2023 at IIT Gandhinagar, instructed by Prof. Mayank Singh. This project is developed in Neo4j for the following demonstration.

For instance, I have made a small dummy dataset of faculty, students and a few other details and imported the csv files into Neo4j. I created and connected entity nodes. The tool organized and visualized the data of the dataset like below.

The Cipher queries are intuitive and easy to follow. ‘()’ would contain an entity and ‘[]’ would describe the relation type between the entities attached with arrows ‘→’

Simple queries like:
match (x:Faculty)-[:belongs]->(y:Department)
where y.dept_name=’Humanities and Social Sciences’
return x

returns us all the faculty members from the HSS department as shown below:

One can add, edit, delete entries in the database like any other database management system. I have used variables in the queries to easily refer to them, used constraints on attributes like IDs to be unique, and set the size and shade of some nodes to vary based on attributes like salary and experience, easily without needing much prior database concepts.

The tool can take care of heavy datasets, complex queries, and data-based customizable visualizations. This is a widely used tool by leading organizations both in government and private sectors. This database tool, like some others freely available on the internet, is a good platform to look up to for database management applications.

References:

Neo4j platform has tutorials and good documentation about the tool: https://neo4j.com/cloud/platform/aura-graph-database/?ref=nav-get-started-cta.

Neo4j in 100 Seconds, Fireship, Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6L9EoBy8Zk.