GraphConnect 2014 SF: How eBay and Shutl Deliver Even Faster Using Neo4j presented by Volker Pacher, Senior Developer, eBay

1. SAN FRANCISCO | 10.22.2014
How eBay and Shutl Deliver Even Faster Using Neo4j
powered by

2. Volker Pacher
https://github.com/vpacher
@vpacher

3. Shutl

4. ECOMMERCE IS QUICK & CONVENIENT

5. PAYPAL FOR AWESOME DELIVERY
Branded, super quick delivery that people trust, embedded in merchant websites

6. HUB & SPOKE
A B
POINT TO POINT
Only cost effective means to deliver 10+ miles but slow and unpredictable
A
B
Fast and predictable but cost prohibitive over longer distances

7. PHOUIBN T& TSOP OPKOEINT
+7,500 more!
97%3% C oCuoruierri,e Er, xEpxrpersess &s &P aPracercl eMl aMrakerktet

8. Shutl generates a quote from
each relevant available carrier
Best option picked based
on price & quality rating
SHOP
££
£££
£
££
£
£

9. On checkout, a job is sent via API into the
chosen carrier’s transportation system
Courier collects from nearest
store and delivers to shopper
SHOP
$$
SHOP

10. Track your order online…

11. FEEDBACK
Shutl sends feedback email tQo uthaelit cyo isn spuamraemr osuecnotnds after they have received
Feedbdacekliv setrrye aamskeindg u tnoe draitteed q tuoa lsithautitvl.ec oamsp/efecetsd boaf cekx &pe fraiceenbcoeok

12. FEEDBACK

13. FEEDBACK

14. FEEDBACK

15. FEEDBACK

17. Version One
Ruby 1.8, Rails 2.3 and MySQL
• Well-known tale: built quickly, worked slowly, tough to maintain
• Getting a quote for an hour time-slot took over 4 seconds

18. Here is the Shutl price calendar
To generate this in V1, the merchant site would have had to call Shutl to get
available slots (2 seconds)
Then, they would have to call Shutl to generate a quote for each slot - for
two days of store opening, that’s 20+ slots
So, that’s 2 + (20 x 4) seconds, 1:22 to generate the data for this calendar
In V1, this UX could never have happened.

19. V2

20. • Broke app into services
V2
• Services focused around functions like quoting, booking, and
giving feedback
• Key goal for the project was improving the speed of the quoting
operation, which is where we use a graph database

21. graphs to the rescue!

22. relationships are explicit stored

23. data modelling made easy

24. additive domain modelling

25. traversals of relationships are easy and very fast

26. DB performance remains relatively constant as
queries are localised to its portion of the graph.
O(1) for same query

27. a graph is its own index (constant query performance)

28. the case for Neo4j

29. single image graphdb

30. standalone or embedded in jvm

31. ruby/jruby

32. ruby libraries - neo4j gem by Andreas Ronge
(https://github.com/andreasronge/neo4j)

33. cypher

34. the neotech guys are awesome

35. V1
V2
• Quoting for 20 windows down
from 82000 ms to 450 ms
• Code complexity much
reduced

36. What did we learn - the good bits
• Cypher is easy to learn (and more importantly, easy to
remember)
• modelling our domain turned from a chore to an
(almost) fun exercise and provided us with insights we
could feed back into the business
• code maintenance has become much easier
• new feature requests from the business are implement
faster and with less refactoring necessary

37. Some gotchas
• There was a learning curve in switching from a relational
mentality to a graph one
• Tooling not as mature as in the relational world
• No out of the box solution for db migrations
• Seeding an embedded database was unfamiliar

38. Testing was a challenge
• Setting up scenarios for tests was tedious
• Built our own tool based on the geoff syntax developed by Nigel Small
• Geoff allows modelling of graphs in textual form and provides an
interface to insert them into an existing graph
(A) {“name”: “Alice”}
(B) {“name”: “Bob”}
(A) -[:KNOWS] -> (B)
• We created a Ruby dsl for modelling a graph and inserting it into the db
that works with factory_girl
• Open source - https://github.com/shutl/geoff

39. SHUTL IS NOW AN COMPANY

40. powered by

41. on

42. Wrap Up
• Neo4j enabled Shutl to achieve big
performance increases in its most important
operation - calculating delivery prices and
availabilities
• It’s a new tool based on tested theory, and
cypher is the first language that allows you to
query graphs in a declarative way (like SQL)
• Tooling and adoption is immature but getting
better all the time

43. Thank you!
Any questions?
@vpacher
https://github.com/vpacher
volker@shutl.com
Volker Pacher
Senior Developer