As a robust, scalable and high-performance database, Neo4j is suitable for full enterprise deployment.
It features:
- true ACID transactions,
- high availability,
- scales to billions of nodes and relationships,
- high speed querying through traversals,
- declarative graph query language.
Proper ACID behavior is the foundation of data reliability. Neo4j enforces that all operations that modify data occur within a transaction, guaranteeing consistent data. This robustness extends from single instance embedded graphs to multi-server high availability installations. For details, see Chapter 18, Transaction Management.
Reliable graph storage can easily be added to any application. A graph can scale in size and complexity as the application evolves, with little impact on performance. Whether starting new development, or augmenting existing functionality, Neo4j is only limited by physical hardware.
A single server instance can handle a graph of billions of nodes and relationships. When data throughput is insufficient, the graph database can be distributed among multiple servers in a high availability configuration. See Chapter 25, High Availability to learn more.
The graph database storage shines when storing richly-connected data. Querying is performed through traversals, which can perform millions of traversal steps per second. A traversal step resembles a join in a RDBMS.