Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neo4j raises $325M series F

neo4j.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 135 posts

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#61

Post by vincent-toups »

handrous wrote: post #51
softwaredoug wrote: post #40

> By 2025, graph technologies will be used in 80% of data and analytics innovations, up from 10% in 2021, facilitating rapid decision making across the enterprise.” What is behind the thought that graph databases are going to grow so much in the next few years? To me they've always had a niche use... Are they really going to be ubiquitous (like this funding seems to assume?)

Neo4j is all-in on, "almost everything looks like (or can be made to look like) a graph, so almost everyone should be using a graph database". As for those specific figures, I'm guessing there's enough wiggle room in "data and analytics innovations " (emphasis mine) to find or project almost any trend one wishes. What are data analytics innovations ? Why, it's the set of things that will see 80% use of graph technolo…

"Everything looks like a graph" is more damning of the idea of a graph as storage than it is praise. The whole point of a database is to impose _additional_ constraints on the data to ease subsequent application development or data analysis.

Relational data may be a hassle but its a hassle you end up having to deal with anyway at some point.

I can see a graph database as being a useful place to stash a ton of shitty data as an initial place to start an ETL but I can't imagine using it as a system of record except in very limited situations.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#62

Post by handrous »

vincent-toups wrote: post #61
handrous wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neo4j is all-in on, "almost everything looks like (or can be made to look like) a graph, so almost everyone should be using a graph database". As for those specific figures, I'm guessing there's enough wiggle room in "data and analytics innovations " (emphasis mine) to find or project almost any trend one wishes. What are data analytics innovations ? Why, it's the set of things that will see 80% use of graph technolo…

"Everything looks like a graph" is more damning of the idea of a graph as storage than it is praise. The whole point of a database is to impose _additional_ constraints on the data to ease subsequent application development or data analysis. Relational data may be a hassle but its a hassle you end up having to deal with anyway at some point. I can see a graph database as being a useful place to stash a ton of shitty…

Oh, I agree that, baring some actual honest-to-god innovation, the whole product category's niche-by-nature. Just relating the way Neo4j's been positioning themselves.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#63

Post by cerved »

chippiewill wrote: post #17
handrous wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're a fairly major graph database product with a well-funded sales team that has been hammering the "I mean, doesn't everything look kinda like a graph? Isn't your data kinda a graph? You should definitely use us as your database-of-record, or for literally anything else you might use a database for, look how fast we are at graph stuff!" line hard and (apparently) with great success.

I used to work for a database vendor. I'm getting serious 'nam style flashbacks reading your comment. The capability of sales to sell a product to massive companies for a use case that we're actually not very good at was unbelievable.

I used to work in IT sales and I'm not surprised

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#64

Post by handrous »

dkarras wrote: post #59
handrous wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My new tech lead is talking about switching from MongoDB to one of those. File under, "not sure if a very good joke, or serious". I'm leaning toward the former. "New tech lead" is the give-away (or is it?).

So... what is wrong with them? I've only had very good experience with ArangoDB.

New tech lead pushing switching an existing product from infamously-cargo-culted MongoDB, of the much-hyped-but-now-passed Document Databases Are The Future wave, to either of a couple products in the current "X database architecture is The Future" wave? Does that not read like it could just as well be straight-faced parody, as real? The products may be fine, so far as they go, that's not what I'm trying to puzzle out here.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#65

Post by dvirsky »

whalesalad wrote: post #19
caturopath wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having some department at e.g. Volvo using your product doesn't mean that you have Volvo as a serious customer paying you like they would as a serious customer. I take your point that this is a really late round of funding, but this doesn't mean they've caught on like they want to yet.

I agree that what you've described is likely the true situation. It just looks funny to see a company claim to be worth $2 billion dollars and namedrop big brands and yet require a 6th cash injection. There is an incongruence there.

Redis Labs are more or less doing the same.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#66

Post by somewhereoutth »

speaktorob wrote: post #54
somewhereoutth wrote: post #48

Graph DBs work if you know your relationships of interest ahead of time, and are happy to have them baked into your dataset. With relational databases, you can join on anything anywhen, so you can explore new relationships as you go.

That's exactly the trade off, isn't it? Either you do the work to store the relationships and save on the compute and memory cost later, or you pay as you go to build it in real time with a relational database. It's horses for courses.

It could be argued that a graph dB is just a really badly implemented index.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#67

Post by hsaliak »

Grimm1 wrote: post #12

What this tells me is that the graph db space has a lot of room in it for someone to come along and make a kick ass product, because honestly every time I've had a problem a graph db can solve I remember I basically only have a few mediocre choices to choose from. Neo4J has been very meh in my experience, but they are the biggest.

That’s DGraph

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#68

Post by deckard1 »

handrous wrote: post #35
tgtweak wrote: post #24

I always find it amusing how much graphQL there is without actual graph db behind it. Seems the concept of having fluid relationships is appealing for querying but not structuring/storing... which seems like a disconnect. I have only seen a few Neo4J systems in serious production workloads and they were ALL on logistics... I'm not sure that it's being positioned (or interpreted) as a nice simple solution to start out…

GraphQL has been such a bad name to deal with. I've seen so much "we need a graph, so isn't graphQL a good idea?" or "this is a graph database, so doing graphQL on it will be way easier & more natural than on a SQL db, right?". Even from technical and semi-technical people.

This always annoyed me more than it should.

It's also torturing the definition of "query language." There is no equivalent of "join", or any other typical query feature such as aggregation, grouping, sorting, filtering. GraphQL has as much to do with graphs or query languages as my smart TV has to do with intelligence. It's RPC, but RPC fell out of fashion when SOAP/WSDL/XML died.

Re: Neo4j raises $325M series F

#70

Post by LukeEF »

dkarras wrote: post #59
handrous wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My new tech lead is talking about switching from MongoDB to one of those. File under, "not sure if a very good joke, or serious". I'm leaning toward the former. "New tech lead" is the give-away (or is it?).

So... what is wrong with them? I've only had very good experience with ArangoDB.

they are a solid product - graph and document is a good mix. don't listen to the negative postgres fundos (especially ones who don't understand what a solid and performative database Mongo has become)
Post reply on HN