neo4j performance compared to mysql (how can it be improved?)

mysql, neo4j, performance, python

Solution

I'm sorry you can't reproduce the results. However, on a MacBook Air (1.8 GHz i7, 4 GB RAM) with a 2 GB heap, GCR cache, but no warming of caches, and no other tuning, with a similarly sized dataset (1 million users, 50 friends per person), I repeatedly get approx 900 ms using the Traversal Framework on 1.9.2:

public class FriendOfAFriendDepth4
{
    private static final TraversalDescription traversalDescription = 
         Traversal.description()
            .depthFirst()
            .uniqueness( Uniqueness.NODE_GLOBAL )
            .relationships( withName( "FRIEND" ), Direction.OUTGOING )
            .evaluator( new Evaluator()
            {
                @Override
                public Evaluation evaluate( Path path )
                {
                    if ( path.length() >= 4 )
                    {
                        return Evaluation.INCLUDE_AND_PRUNE;
                    }
                    return Evaluation.EXCLUDE_AND_CONTINUE;

                }
            } );

    private final Index<Node> userIndex;

    public FriendOfAFriendDepth4( GraphDatabaseService db )
    {
        this.userIndex = db.index().forNodes( "user" );
    }

    public Iterator<Path> getFriends( String name )
    {
        return traversalDescription.traverse( 
            userIndex.get( "name", name ).getSingle() )
                .iterator();
    }

    public int countFriends( String name )
    {
        return  count( traversalDescription.traverse( 
            userIndex.get( "name", name ).getSingle() )
                 .nodes().iterator() );
    }
}

Cypher is slower, but nowhere near as slow as you suggest: approx 3 seconds:

START person=node:user(name={name})
MATCH (person)-[:FRIEND]->()-[:FRIEND]->()-[:FRIEND]->()-[:FRIEND]->(friend)
RETURN count(friend)

Kind regards

ian

Problem

Original source