Rules of thumb

Here is a list of rules to help you make your queries the most performant possible.

Explain all the queries

Once written and their results verified, explain all your queries on a decent dataset to look for possible bottlenecks, as explained earlier in this chapter.

Rows

In your query plans, the row counts should decrease rapidly from top to bottom. If not, did you use enough labels? Enough indexes? Are the properties you use indexed?

Do not overconsume

Virtual resources are resources too. Do not waste CPU cycles, memory, and energy by returning more data than you need. Do not get the full nodes if you only want to use a few properties of each.

Cartesian or not?

Unless authorized, you should not do a cartesian product in your queries. You may already know this, but sometimes it happens. For example, here is one, the most obvious:

MATCH (n),(m)
RETURN n,m

Mind that the number of results is the square of the number of nodes. Recognize cartesian products by the lack of relation expressed...