This weekly newsletter from Neo4j discusses recent developments in graph databases including: - An updated World Cup graph dataset and GraphQL API to explore match data. - A new video in the Introduction to Graph Databases series explaining the Cypher query language. - A blog post about tuning Cypher queries by understanding cardinality.

1. This Week in Neo4j
23rd June 2018

2. Mark Needham
Developer Relations Engineer at Neo4j
mark.needham@neo4j.com / devrel@neo4j.com
@markhneedham
2

3. The week's graph database news
in one handy slide deck!
Find the archive at
neo4j.com/tag/twin4j

4. Featured community member: Bea Hernández
Learn more about Bea

5. We’re well into the 2nd round of matches at World Cup
2018 and Michael and I decided to revive the World Cup
Graph that we first created 4 years ago. The dataset
contains the matches, players, and tournaments for every
World Cup from 1930 to the
present day.
The World Cup Graph
Read the blog post

6. World Cup GraphQL API
Read the blog post
To make the World Cup Graph accessible to people not yet
fluent with the Cypher query language we also created a
GraphQL API on top of the database. This only took us a
few hours thanks to the excellent GRANDstack Starter Kit.
All the scaffolding had been done for us – all we had to do
was fill in details about our database and
create a GraphQL schema.

7. Based on popular demand, Ryan this week resumed the
Intro to Graph Databases YouTube series with a video
explaining the Cypher query language. Ryan starts by
explaining how the developer surface of Neo4j has evolved
over the years, from the embedded
Java API to the present day of Bolt
drivers and Cypher queries.
Intro to Graph Databases Episode #5
Cypher, the Graph Query Language
Watch the video

8. Learn how to tune Cypher
Andrew Bowman explains how to tune Cypher queries by
understanding cardinality. He starts with a high level
overview of how Cypher execution works, and then takes
us through a worked example from the in
built movies dataset, showing various tricks
to improve the performance of the query.
Tuning Cypher queries by understanding cardinality

9. Last week we featured a blog post where Rik showed how
to import the Open Beer Database along with Spatial data
points, and in this week’s blog post he shows how to write
queries against this new data type.
Querying spatial data points in Neo4j
Read the blog post

10. On my GitHub travels I came across a few interesting
projects that you can take a look at if you get some free
time this week. They include a knowledge graph that can
be used with Microsoft’s LUIS NLU or google’s
Dialogflow.com NLU, as well as a tool to
convert and load RDF into Neo4j.
Projects to play with:
Knowledge Graph, Mortality Explorer, RDF → Graph
Find projects to play with

11. If you liked this check
out the blog post
This Week in Neo4j - 23rd June 2018