Neography | Max De Marzi

Sep 11 2014

Cypher, Deployment, Heroku, Neography, Problems, Visualization

Tracking User Paths in an IVR with Neo4j

I started my software development career writing applications for a Call Center at a small bank in Florida. I remember the bank had purchased whatever the “Cadillac” of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems was then for some crazy amount of money. Today you can build an IVR overnight using Twilio.

When you sign up with Twilio, you get to choose your phone number (more or less). For example, I picked +1 (636) 451-7411, which spells out +1 (neo) 4j1-7411. If you were to call this number right now (assuming I have not run out of Twilio credits) you’ll connect to my IVR.
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Tagged d3.js, graph database, ivr, neo4j, network, ruby

Jan 31 2014

6 Comments

Cypher, Neography, Spatial

Neo4j Spatial Part 1

One of my new year resolutions is to do a project with Neo4j Spatial, so we’ll kick off my first blog post of the year with a gentle introduction to this awesome plugin. I advise you to watch this very short 15 minute video by Neo4j Spatial creator Craig Taverner. The man is a genius level developer, you’ll gain IQ points just listening, I swear.

The plan is to make a Restaurant Recommendation engine based on things you care about and your current location. Yes, this is baby level stuff, but we’ll start with this and see where else Neo4j Spatial can take us later on.
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Tagged cypher, graph database, neo4j, network, recommendation, restaurants, ruby, spatial

Sep 05 2013

2 Comments

Neography, Problems

Scaling Writes

scaling_writes

Most of the applications using Neo4j are read heavy and scale by getting more powerful servers or adding additional instances to the HA cluster. Writes however can be a little bit tricker. Before embarking on any of the following strategies it is best that the server is tuned. See the Linux Performance Guide for details. One strategy we’ve seen already is splitting the reads and writes to the cluster, so the writes only go to the Master. The brave can even change the push factor to zero and set a pull interval only in neo4j/conf/neo4j.properties:
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Tagged graph database, neo4j, performance, software, technology, testing

Jul 03 2013

The Last Mile

The “last mile” is a term used in the telecommunications industry that refers to delivering connectivity to the customers that will actually be using the system. In the sense of Graph Databases, it refers to how well the end user can extract value and insight from the graph. We’ve already seen an example of this concept with Graph Search, allowing a user to express their requests in natural language. Today we’ll see another example. We’ll be taking advantage of the features of Neo4j 2.0 to make this work, so be sure to have read the previous post on the matter.

We’re going to be using VisualSearch.js made by Samuel Clay of NewsBlur. VisualSearch.js enhances ordinary search boxes with the ability to autocomplete faceted search queries. It is quite easy to customize and there is an annotated walkthrough of the options available. You can see what it does in the image below, or click it to try their demo.

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Tagged cypher, graph database, graph databases, graph search, neo4j, network, nosql, visualization

Jun 26 2013

7 Comments

Cypher, Neography, Random

Neo4j 2.0 is coming

House Neo4j of Graph Databases is one of the Great Houses of NOSQL and the principal noble house of The Graph; many lesser houses are sworn to them. In days of old they ruled as Kings of the Graph; since the Aggregate Store Conquest they have been Wardens of the Path. Their seat, San Mateo, is an ancient castle renowned for its sushi. Their sigil is a octopus racing across a field of white, and their words are “Neo4j 2.0 Is Coming,” one of only a few house mottoes to be a warning rather than a boast. Members of the family tend to be lean of build and long of face, with golden hair and blue eyes.

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Tagged cypher, graph, graph database, graph databases, neo4j, node labels, nosql

Mar 24 2013

1 Comment

Neography, Problems

Permission Resolution with Neo4j – Part 2

Let’s try tackling something a little bigger. In Part 1 we created a small graph to test our permission resolution graph algorithm and it worked like a charm on our dozen or so nodes and edges. I don’t have fast hands, so instead of typing out a million node graph, we’ll build a graph generator and use the batch importer to load it into Neo4j. What I want to create is a set of files to feed to the batch-importer.
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Tagged github, graph, graph algorithm, graph database, neo4j, ruby

Jan 28 2013

17 Comments

Cypher, Heroku, Neography, Problems

Facebook Graph Search with Cypher and Neo4j

Update: Facebook has disabled this application

Your app is replicating core Facebook functionality.

Facebook Graph Search has given the Graph Database community a simpler way to explain what it is we do and why it matters. I wanted to drive the point home by building a proof of concept of how you could do this with Neo4j. However, I don’t have six months or much experience with NLP (natural language processing). What I do have is Cypher. Cypher is Neo4j’s graph language and it makes it easy to express what we are looking for in the graph. I needed a way to take “natural language” and create Cypher from it. This was going to be a problem.
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Tagged cypher, facebook, github, graph database, heroku, ruby, search

Nov 14 2012

6 Comments

Cypher, Heroku, Neography, Visualization

CrunchBase on Neo4j

NeoTechnology was featured on TechCrunch after raising a Series B round, and it has an entry on CrunchBase. If you look at CrunchBase closely you’ll notice it’s a graph. Who invested in what, who co-invested, what are the common investment themes between investors, how are companies connected by board members, etc. These are questions we can ask of the graph and are well suited for graph databases.
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Tagged cypher, github, graph database, heroku, neo4j, network, ruby, visualization

Oct 18 2012

10 Comments

Cypher, Heroku, Neography, Problems

Matches are the New Hotness

How do you help a person without a job find one online? A search screen. How do you help a person find love online? A search screen. How do you find which camera to buy online? A search screen. How do you help a sick person self diagnose online? I have no idea, I go to the doctor. Doesn’t matter, what I want to tell you is that there is another way.
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Aug 17 2012

23 Comments

Cypher, Heroku, Neography, Visualization

NeoSocial: Connecting to Facebook with Neo4j

Social applications and Graph Databases go together like peanut butter and jelly. I’m going to walk you through the steps of building an application that connects to Facebook, pulls your friends and likes data and visualizes it. I plan on making a video of me coding it one line at a time, but for now let’s just focus on the main elements.
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Tagged d3.js, github, graph database, heroku, javascript, neo4j, relationship graph, ruby, visualization

Max De Marzi

Graphs, Graphs, and nothing but the Graphs

Category Archives: Neography