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Neo at JavaOne

Posted at: 2008-05-07 – 10:38

The Neo team is hacking JavaOne 2008! Tobias is giving a talk and the rest of the crew is dealing out free beer. If you’re around and want to chat or grab a beer, please drop us (Emil and Tobias) a note!

Neo talk at Java Posse Roundup

Posted at: 2008-04-14 – 18:08

At The Java Posse Roundup 2008, Tobias Ivarsson did a lightning talk about Neo. Watch it on YouTube.


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Neo is a netbase — a network-oriented database — that is, an embedded, disk-based, fully transactional Java persistence engine that stores data structured in networks rather than in tables. A network (or graph, in mathematical lingo) is a flexible data structure that allows a more agile and rapid style of development.

You can think of Neo as a high-performance graph engine with all the features of a mature and robust database. The programmer works with an object-oriented, flexible network structure rather than with strict and static tables — yet enjoys all the benefits of a fully transactional, enterprise-strength database.

Neo is released under a dual free software/commercial license model (which basically means that it’s “open source” but if you’re interested in using it in commercially, then you must buy a commercial license).

Neo has been in commercial development for 7 years and in production for over 4 years. It is a mature and robust netbase that provides:

  • an intuitive network-oriented model for data representation. Instead of static and rigid tables, rows and columns, you work with a flexible network consisting of nodes, relationships and properties.
  • a disk-based, native storage manager completely optimized for storing network structures for maximum performance and scalability.
  • massive scalability. Neo can handle networks of several billion nodes/relationships/properties on single-machine hardware.
  • a powerful traversal framework for high-speed traversals in the node space.
  • a small footprint. Neo consists of a single <500k jar.
  • a simple and convenient object-oriented API.
  • optional layers to expose Neo as an RDF store, i.e. easily inject / extract data as RDF, express meta model semantics using OWL and query the node space using SPARQL. When it comes to scalability numbers, remember that several triples are usually mapped to a single node. (currently being developed under the umbrella of the OpenMetadir project)

In addition, Neo includes the usual database features: ACID transactions, durable persistence, concurrency control, transaction recovery, and everything else you’d expect from an enterprise-strength database.

To try it out for yourself, grab a copy at the download page and then hit the getting started tutorial. Neo is easy to learn, so you can expect to go through the tutorial and be up and running in about ten minutes.

For more information about Neo, see the documentation.