Neo4j 3.4 aims to make connected data even more accessible

Graph database project Neo4j has announced the release of Neo4j 3.4. The update is poised to strengthen Neo4j's position as the market leader in the world of connected data, and could make it more accessible for more organizations and users.

Alongside the updates and improvements in Neo4j 3.4, the team have also announced Neo4j Bloom. This is a data visualization tool designed to make it easier to communicate and present insights to key stakeholders. It's a well-established fact that communication is key if you're going to do data science and data analysis well, so it's clear that Neo4j are directly responding to a key issue for their customers. It's also a valuable hook for any potential new customers.

Emil Eifrem (@emileifrem) founder and CEO of Neo4j has this to say about the updates:

"Our investments in the Neo4j database extend its ability to scale and drive new use cases for our current customers... Graph databases are an enterprise standard, and the introduction of Neo4j 3.4 and Neo4j Bloom means more people will discover the power and value of connected data."

What's new in Neo4j 3.4?

There are a number of important new features in Neo4j 3.4. Let's take a look at some of them.

There have been some impressive improvements in performance. Neo4j has always been best in class when it comes to the performance of its database. But with 3.4, it consolidates its position. Cypher now executes 70% faster, data loading is now 30%-50% faster, and backups are apparently now 100% faster.

Multi-clustering brings fully sharded horizontal scaling one step closer.

3D geospatial and data/time search functions extend the range of potential use cases. That means the graph databases users build have additional dimensions for users to search.

Neo4j Bloom: making connected data accessible

Neo4j is a tool that has been designed by the project to make complex graph databases easier to visualize and explore. Abstract relationships that may be difficult to interpret and understand for an outsider will become much clearer. That's good news for data scientists and data analysts, but it's also good news for Neo4j - key stakeholders and decision makers who don't have technical expertise will now also be paying attention to Neo4j.

It's important to note the uniqueness of Neo4j Bloom. It is able to present the connections and context around various data points; that gives it an extra dimension over other popular data visualization tools.

"Neo4j Bloom is specifically designed to illuminate connections between data points in an intuitive way, especially for executives and stakeholders who might not be very technical" explains Eifrem.

You can find out more about Neo4j 3.4 here.