CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mongodbgraphneo4j
Geert-Jan
Geert-Jan

Reputation: 18895

Combining MongoDB and a GraphDB like Neo4J

As part of a CMS I'm developing I've got MongoDB as the primary datastore which feeds to ElasticSearch and Redis. All this is configured decleratively.

I'm currently trying to develop a declarative api in JSON (A DSL of sorts) which, when implemented, will enable me to write uniform queries in JSON, but at the backend these datastores work in tandem to come up with the result. Federated search if you will.

Now, while fleshing out the supported types of queries for this Json api, I've come across a class of queries not (efficiently) supported by my current setup: graph-based queries, like friend-of-friend, RDF-queries, etc. Something I'd like to support as well.

So I'm looking for a way to introduce a GraphDB into this ecosystem with the best fit. I should probably say the app-layer sits in Node.js.

I've come across lots of articles comparing Neo4J (a popular GraphDB) vs MongoDB, but not so much of actual use-cases, real world scenarios in which the 2 are complemented.

Any pointers highly appreciated.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2726

Answers (2)

henry74
henry74

Reputation: 1043

The databases are very much complementary.

Use MongoDB to store your raw data/system of record and load the raw data into Neo4j for additional insights/analysis. When you are dealing with unstructured data, you want to store the information in a datastore which is conducive to unstructure data - MongoDB fits the bill (as does other similar NOSQL databases). While Neo4j is considered a NOSQL database, it doesn't fit the bill for unstructured data. Because you have to determine what is a relationship, what is a node, and what properties are stored for each - it's better suited when you have semi-structured data and some understanding of the type of analysis you want to do.

A great architecture is store your unstructured data in MongoDB and use jobs to load them into Neo4j. This allows you to re-load your graph if you figure out there are new pieces of information you'd like to store in the graph for additional analysis.

They are definitely NOT replacements for each other. They fit very different use cases.

Upvotes: 2

Christian Morgner
Christian Morgner

Reputation: 319

You might want to take a look at structr[1], which has a RESTful graph database backend that you can configure using Java beans. In future versions, there will be a configuration option using REST calls only, so that you can fire up a structr server and configure and use it as a standalone graph database backend.

Just contact us on twitter or via email.

(disclaimer: I'm one of the developers of structr, so this comment may not be 100% impartial :))

[1] http://structr.org

Upvotes: 5

Related Questions