Database Reference
In-Depth Information
anyadditionalpeculiaritiesintroducedbythewrapperlibraryitselfalsoneedingtobetaken
into account.
Alistingofthelatest languagewrappersavailable canbefoundat
http://neo4j.org/drivers/
.
At the time of writing, this list included the likes of JRuby, Django, JavaScript, Scala, and
Clojure.
This concludes our initial foray into how the embedded mode works and what's required
to start making use of it. Next up is a similar exploration of the nature and workings of the
server mode, before we move on to looking at the trade-offs, pros, and cons of both.
10.3. Server mode
Unlike embedded mode, running Neo4j in server mode involves having all the classes and
logic to access and process interactions with the Neo4j database contained within its own
dedicated process, completely separate from any clients wishing to use it. As with many
otherserver-basedsetups,clientsneedsomemechanismforinteractingwiththeserverpro-
cess, and in the case of Neo4j, this is achieved by using the well-defined, yet extensible,
HTTP-based REST API.
What is REST?
REST is sometimes seen as a bit of an overloaded term, but officially it stands for
repres-
entational state transfer
.Inanutshell,itcanbethoughtofasanarchitecturalstylethatem-
braces and takes advantage of the way in which the web operates and is structured, in most
cases using HTTP as the vehicle of choice to help accomplish this. For the full theoretical
definition and explanation of REST, refer to Roy Fielding's doctoral dissertation, “Archi-
tectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures” (2000), where
this concept was originally proposed and first published (
www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/
By and large, web pages and the ways in which people interact with them follow a con-
sistent pattern, both from the point of view of the user navigating them as well as the serv-
ers and supporting infrastructure behind them. As a user, you request pages (resources) by
providing URLs. These pages are then returned with the data you requested, as well as ad-
