Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Getting Started with Cypher
Database systems need query languages in order for humans and software
applicationstointeractwiththeminaneficientway.Thereareanumberofgraph
query languages out there already (Gremlin and SparQL, to name just two), and
some of these have certainly inspired the creation of Cypher, but Cypher is quite
different than anything else you may have come across before. No topic on Neo4j
would be complete without at least spending some time on it—in spite of the fact
that there are entire topics, presentations, and courses available for you to review.
The key attributes of Cypher
In making Cypher, Neo Technology and Andres Taylor (
@andres_taylor
) set out
tocreateanewquerylanguage,speciicallyfordealingwithgraphdatastructures
like the ones we store in Neo4j. There were a couple of reasons for doing this, more
speciicallyfourattributesthatarenotavailabletogetherinanyotherquerylanguage
out there.
Let's quickly examine these attributes, as they are quite important to understanding
the way Cypher works in Neo4j:
•
Declarative
: Cypher is a declarative query language, which is very different
from the imperative alternatives out there. You
declare
the pattern that you
are looking for. You effectively tell Cypher what you want, not how to get it.
This is crucial, as imperative approaches always suppose that you—as you
interact with the database—have the following qualities:
° A programmer who knows how to tell the database what to
do—probably with some procedural logic that would need to
be formalized in a program
