News

Neo4j Announces GA of its Next-Gen Graph Database

• By John K. Waters
• November 10, 2022

Graph database pioneer Neo4j announced the general availability of the latest update of its namesake offering this week. Neo4j 5 was developed to widen the performance lead of native graphs over traditional databases, the company said, while providing easier scale-out and scale-up across any deployment, whether on-premises, in the cloud, hybrid, or multi cloud.

"Graph technology adoption is accelerating as organizations seek better ways to leverage connections in data to solve complex problems at scale," said Neo4j CEO and co-founder, Emil Eifrem, in a statement. "We designed Neo4j 5 to deliver the type of scalability, agility, and performance that enable organizations to push the envelope on what’s possible for their data and their business."

Founded in 2007 by Eifrem, Johan Svensson, and Peter Neubauer, the company has all but defined the space. In fact, Eifrem is widely credited with coining the term "graph database."

A graph database is used to represent relationships. Instead of tables or documents, it uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data.

The list of updates in this release includes:

• Query language improvements and up to 1000x faster query performance. New
• syntax makes it easier to write complex pattern-matching queries. Improvements in indexes, query planning, and runtime make Neo4j 5 the fastest implementation ever, the company says. For example, multi-hop queries can now be executed up to 1000x faster than Neo4j 4. These improvements are above and beyond the already exponentially faster Neo4j’s graph results over traditional databases. Together, these benefits enable more real-time results at scale. 

• Automated scale-out across hundreds of machines, enabling self-managed customers to grow and handle a massive number of queries with little manual effort and significantly less infrastructure cost. This benefit is achieved via new and enhanced features such as Autonomous Clustering and Fabric, enabling organizations to efficiently operate very large graphs and scale out in any environment. Neo4j 5 also automates the allocation and reassignment of computing resources. 

• Continuous updates across all deployments, whether in the cloud, multi-cloud, hybrid, or on-prem. Neo4j 5 ensures ongoing compatibility between self-managed and Aura workloads managed by Neo4j. In addition, a new tool called Neo4j Ops Manager provides a unified single pane for easy monitoring and management of global deployments, giving customers full control over their environments.

Neo4j 5 is available for download at neo4j.com/download-center and on AWS, Azure, and GCP Marketplaces.