This Week in Neo4j: VS Code Extension, Geospatial Data, Closeness Centrality, Project Management, and More!


This week’s newsletter features tools to make your life easier using graph theory and practical applications. Top of the list is a Neo4j VS Code extension to manage connections to Neo4j instances and run Cypher queries in the IDE. You can switch your active database connection anytime, run read and write transactions, and a Cypher statement in a larger file can be highlighted and run – the extension providing debug information. Another tool you might want to check out translates CosmosDB instances to Neo4j. There’s plenty more, so dive in!

Cheers,
Yolande Poirier

P.S.: If you’re a developer building modern applications with GraphQL, don’t forget to take this short, two-minute survey. We want to hear from you!
 

Sebastian has spent his entire professional career on the topic of interactive graph visualization. More than 20 years ago he helped establish yWorks as the leading provider of graph visualization software development kits. Today, he is CTO of the company, leading a team of more than two dozen software developers who work on the company’s visualization SDK ‘yFiles.’ He is a developer at heart who wants to help others get into graph and diagram visualization as smoothly as possible. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

In his NODES 2022 presentation, he explores the contents of your Neo4j graph database visually, right inside your Jupyter notebooks. He creates powerful notebook scripts that connect to your graph database using Python, executes Cypher queries, and runs graph data science algorithms. Watch his talk “Explore Your Graphs Visually With Jupyter Notebooks”!


 
GEOSPATIAL: Spatial Search Functionality With Neo4j
In this post, William Lyon explores some techniques for working with geospatial data in Neo4j. He covers some basic spatial Cypher functions, spatial search, routing algorithms, and different methods of importing geospatial data into Neo4j.
 
AI: When Is the Closeness Centrality Algorithm Best Applied?
Closeness Centrality algorithms are unique because they are typically used to find nodes that can quickly interact with other nodes. Fatima Rubio, Sr. Data Scientist, examines how the algorithm works, how to use it in practice, and how to account for edge cases.
 
NODES SESSION: Graph Pattern Matching

Nadja Müller and Petra Selmer show you how the graph pattern matching features of Cypher are designed to give users the power they need to tackle modern complex graph problems.




ML: Conversational Artificial Intelligence With Neo4j and Unreal Engine — Part 2

In Part 2, Antonio Origlia explains how a plugin for the Unreal Engine enables game engines to develop interactive experiences. A graph connects neural layers such as speech recognition with decision-making layers to represent utterances, recognized intents, and entities.

DATABASE: Taking CosmosDB and Pushing to Neo4j

Do you have data in CosmosDB that you want to see in Neo4j? Charlotte Skardon’s project connects to a CosmosDB instance, reads the Vertices and Edges, translates them into Nodes and Relationships, and puts them into a Neo4j database.

APP DEVELOPMENT: Run Cypher Without Leaving Your IDE With Neo4j VSCode Extension

If you are constantly switching between Microsoft Visual Studio Code and the Neo4j Browser when writing Cypher statements, you’ll appreciate the Neo4j VS Code Extension by Adam Cowley. Now, you can write, execute, and debug in your favorite IDE with a new Status bar menu that lists connections.

KNOWLEDGE GRAPH: Project Management is a Graph Problem

In this article, Daniel D’Agostino tackles project management by representing tasks as a graph. Dependencies are more visible, and critical path analysis techniques gather more information about scheduling and risk.

TWEET OF THE WEEK: @ApitiusHofmann

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