Alternative approaches to importing data into Neo4j
The first thing everyone should understand is that in a connected world, importing data is, per definition, more difficult to do. It is a true knot that is terribly difficult to untie for many different reasons, but that does not mean that we cannot untie it!
Logically, the problem of importing connected data is technically more difficult than with unconnected data structures. Importing unconnected data (for example, the nodes of your graph model) is always easy/easier. Just dump it all in there. However, you then come to importing the connections and relationships, and you find that there's no such thing as an external entity (also known as the database schema) that will ensure the consistency and connectedness of the import. You have to do this yourself, and explicitly by importing the relationships between the following:
- A start node that you have to find
- An end node that you have to look up
This process is just inherently more complicated...
