Leveraging connected data is becoming more and more important in the development of today’s modern web applications – as demonstrated by, for example, Facebook’s recent release of ‘Graph Search.’ There are many questions on the technology and potential of graph databases to meet this need. This session provides a candid look at how we at Dshini made the move to a graph database two years ago to benefit our social networking platform. After evaluating several NoSQL databases, our team chose Neo4j as the best solution to meet our needs. The result has led to Dshini’s implementation of complex new features based on graph thinking, modeling and querying – with great success.

Come hear insights on how we got into the matter, how Neo4j solves our connected data challenges and what problems graph databases might solve for you. The talk will be given from the developer’s perspective, and is open to all.

This session will offer the following:

• Basic introduction to graph databases and Neo4j in particular
• Why and how we chose a graph database and tips for consideration
• How we used PHP to interface our database and achieve decent query performance
• Overview on lessons learned and good practices you can apply to your own project