CODEWITHSUNDEEP
graphneo4jnosql
Renato Dinhani
Renato Dinhani

Reputation: 36696

What are the advantages of using a label instead of an attribute in a graph database?

I am learning graph databases using Neo4J and my first approach to categorize my nodes was creating an attribute type in all nodes.

After some research, I found that I can use labels to categorize the nodes, but I did not found if there is an advantage of using labels to this task.

Are there any differences between using an attribute or a label?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 613

Answers (2)

Satish Shinde
Satish Shinde

Reputation: 2996

Yes, Labels is a grouping mechanism for nodes. For faster retrieval of the data we should use labels instead of property to the node.

Here is the some difference in the performance of implementation of the both labels and property

http://graphaware.com/neo4j/2015/01/16/neo4j-graph-model-design-labels-versus-indexed-properties.html

Example - If your graph has 1000 nodes and in which 100 nodes and containing information of student, so you have set type = student to those nodes

Now while searching for particular student you need to execute query like this

MATCH (n)
WHERE n.type='student'and n.student_name = 'satish'
return n

This query will check all 1000 nodes and return results to you.

But if you apply labels while creating the node then 

MATCH (n:student)
    WHERE n.student_name = 'satish'
    return n

This query will travel with in only 100 nodes and return the result.

Conclusion- It is better to use labels to the node rather than type property.

Upvotes: 1

Stefan Armbruster
Stefan Armbruster

Reputation: 39915

The main difference is that a property is a key-value-pair. Labels are more like a tag (think of tagging an email in Gmail).

Labels are self-indexed, getting an iterator over all nodes carrying a certain label is a cheap operation.

Also labels are stored directly with the node (unless you use too much labels per node). Accessing a property instead is a second I/O (or cache) access.

Upvotes: 1

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