Adding support for Neo4j in Gephi

[admin]

This is the thread for asking more details about the Adding support for Neo4j in Gephi proposal.

[Payne]

Hi Gephi guys,

i am now working on proposal on this project, but I want to ask one question, if I understand the idea of this project clearly.

The idea is not to create a transformation of Neo4j data file into some of supported Gephi data files, the idea is not to make a full representation of data from Neo4j data file in memory in terms of Gephi model and APIs, but the idea is to make a module, API or something that can query informations from Neo4j data file using appropriate Neo4j APIs on the fly (at runtime).

So I only need Gephi Graph and Attributes APIs.

Am I correct?

[admin]

You are right: as Neo4j is executed on a server to store huge amount of data, the aim is to make Gephi able to query this graph database to get a sub-graph generated from a traversal code.

A second objective is be able to load partial graphs dynamically, i.e. by expanding a node.

[Payne]

Sorry for stupid question, but I don't know if I understand it clearly.

The second goal is to create a Gephi representation of part of Neo4j graph database? So manually creating Gephi nodes and edges from Neo4j, but only a part of whole graph?

[admin]

Yes, because very few machines can handle 1M nodes and 4M edges on RAM.

I roughly see 2 use cases :

• The user write the query in Gephi UI
• The query is sent to a Neo4j server, which executes the traversal
• The returned graph is returned to Gephi, which displays it.

• Assume that a graph was previously loaded
• The user right-click on a node, which causes Gephi to ask the Neo4j server to get the neighbors
• The neighbor list {nodes, edges} are return and displayed in Gephi