Neo4j 2.1 Speeds Relational to Graph Data Transfer With Built-In ETL

Neo Technology, creators of Neo4j, the world’s leading graph database, today announced the general availability of Neo4j 2.1, featuring built-in ETL that makes it easier to bring data in from relational databases and other data sources. Neo4j 2.1 enables businesses to quickly and easily bring their existing data into Neo4j, and unlock new business value by using the power of the graph to leverage the connections in the data. The new functionality provides easy methods for mapping tabular data into Neo4j from CSV files, and runs up to 100 times faster than previously existing methods. “Neo4j 2.1 represents a major step forward in lowering the bar to graph database adoption for organizations who have massive amounts of data in their relational databases,” said Emil Eifrem, CEO of Neo Technology. “Companies across the board are recognizing the value that comes from re-imagining their existing data as a graph. While Neo4j is already renowned for its ease, scalability, and speed, the new built-in ETL capabilities enable the same ease and speed when moving data from an RDBMS into a graph. This will make it easier than ever for organizations to unlock the hidden value of their data, by leveraging the connections.” The use of graph databases continues to broaden and accelerate. Forrester estimates that over 25 percent of enterprises will be using a graph database by 2017. The wide adoption of graph databases can be attributed to their value in solving a lot of seemingly intractable technology problems. These span all industries, with uses ranging from social to digital content management, bioinformatics to trading, identity and access management to Internet of Things, and geo routing to recommendations. Neo4j is trusted by more and more organizations around the world to gain value from the connections in their data. Customers include Walmart and eBay, National Geographic and Cisco, Lufthansa, and HP, and over 40 of the Global 2000.

Neo4j 2.1 Eats Relational Data for Lunch

Building upon the success of this year’s earlier announcement of Neo4j 2.0, which brought graph databases to the masses, today’s release of Neo4j 2.1 is designed to further productivity and performance by offering the following features: Built-in ETL. Neo4j 2.1 makes importing data from relational and other databases seamless: whether it’s millions of rows, or billions. A superfast import option now runs up to 100x faster than previously possible. Cypher CSV Import. Cypher, the world’s most popular graph query language, has expanded to include extracting and mapping data from CSV files. Superfast data loader. Neo4j 2.1 enables developers to rapidly map and move high volumes of data into a graph. Neo4j 2.1 lowers the bar for organizations to unlock the value of their data by modeling and querying it in a graph. “The overwhelming majority of data is stuck in relational databases due in large part to historical and technical inertia. In many cases, relational tables are poorly suited to the ideal structure of the data, resulting in poor performance and unintuitive access,” said RedMonk analyst Donnie Berkholz. “By lowering the migration barrier from relational to graph stores, the latest Neo4j release targets this mismatch, enabling the market reality to grow closer to what’s best-suited for the data.”

Graphs Are Eating the World (and so is Neo4j)

Over the past year, Neo4j has received a variety of awards and recognition, being named a Cool Vendor in DBMS, 2014 by Gartner, Inc., being listed among the ‘Who’s Who in NoSQL DBMSs’ by Gartner, ‘10 Companies and Technologies to Watch in 2013’ by Robin Bloor of the Bloor Group, inclusion in the ‘21 NoSQL Innovators to Look for in 2020’ list by Gary MacFadden of Wikibon, “2014 Technology of the Year” from InfoWorld, as well as notable product awards from AlwaysOn, CRN, DTBA and others. Neo4j is ranked as the world’s leading graph database by industry observer DB-Engines, who also note that graph databases are also growing in popularity faster than any other segment in the database space. According to the firm, “When we look at how much various categories of database management systems increased their popularity last year, Graph DBMSs are the clear winner with more than 250 percent increase.”