From Relational to Graph: How Going Graph Revealed the Unknown

1. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
From Relational to Graph:
How Going Graph Revealed the
Unknown
Jason Schatz
Principal Software Engineer | CodeLogic
Rob Vrooman
Principal Software Engineer | CodeLogic

2. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
What you’ll learn: A rare use case for graph
Making informed development decisions requires a strong
understanding of the connections and complexity within and across
your application landscape.
• How we utilize Neo4j and CypherQL to capture and analyze data
achieved through application profiling
• How moving from a relational database to a Neo4j graph database
allows us to distill complex codebases quickly
• How our platform models data into simplified maps that can be used to
identify cross-application dependencies and code change impact

3. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
© 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
3
Jason Schatz
•18 years of experience
•Full Stack Engineer
•Background
◦ CI/CD
◦ Security
◦ Parts Catalog
◦ Medical
Introductions
•9 years of experience
•Spring Boot
specialization
•Background
◦ Security
◦ Insurance
◦ Billing
Principal Software Engineer
CodeLogic
Rob Vrooman
Principal Software Engineer
CodeLogic

4. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Agenda
Topics
•Graph Model
•Explorer
•Impact Analysis
•Overview
•Ingestion
4

5. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
How we visualize data

6. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Software is
increasingly complex
With full visibility,
developers can understand it
quickly and change
it fearlessly

7. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
And that complexity is growing
How can developers
know ahead of time
that changing this…
…breaks this?

8. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Class hierarchy
Method-to-method
Method to database via ORM
Frequent method calls
Compiler-generated code
Third-party libraries
Method-to-method (non-ORM)
Stored procedures
Dynamic API calls
Database schema
Source
code
scan
Binary
scan
Runtime
scan

9. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
9
Graph Model

10. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
10
Graph Model

11. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Graph Model Benefits
•Index Free Adjacency
•No Impedance Mismatch
•Model Matches Data and Use Case
•Schema Optional
◦ Move Quickly Constrain as needed
11

12. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
12
Explorer

13. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
13
Explorer

14. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
14
Explorer

15. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Simple Explorer Query
•Straightforward query
•Storage model matches the requirement

16. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Real World Explorer Query
•Life adds complications

17. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
17
Impact Analysis

18. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
18
Impact Analysis

19. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
19
Impact Analysis

20. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Impact Analysis Query
•Apoc Procedures to the rescue
•Subgraph All

21. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
21
Overview

22. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
22
Overview

23. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Overview Query
•Spring Data
•Spring Data Neo4j
•Super Simplified

24. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Overview Query Cont.
•Spring Data Generated Query
•dbms.logs.query.enabled

25. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
How is it so Simple?
•Spring Data Generated Query
•Calculations Pre Computed
◦ Rolling up impactScore and other computations
•Extra Relationships added Based on Computations
25

26. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Computed Calculations
•Spring Data Generated Query
•apoc periodic

27. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Computed Relationships
•Create extra relationships to optimize retrieval

28. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
28
Ingestion

29. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Import CSV
•"LOAD CSV Cypher command:
this command is a great starting point and handles small- to
medium-sized data sets (up to 10 million records)."
◦ https://neo4j.com/developer/guide-import-csv/

30. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
Ingestion Challenges
•Dense nodes aren't so super.
◦ Cause deadlocks
◦ Avoid parallel updates
◦ Relationship Chain Locking
•Resolving Data
◦ Order of Operations

31. © 2022 Neo4j, Inc. All rights reserved.
31
Thank you!
Contact us at
jschatz@codelogic.com
rvrooman@codelogic.com