Neo4j

History

Neo4j is developed by Neo4j, Inc., based in San Mateo, California, United States and Malmö, Sweden.

Version 1.0 was released in February 2010.

Neo4j version 2.0 was released in December 2013.

Neo4j version 3.0 was released in April 2016.

In November 2016, Neo4j successfully secured $36M in Series D Funding led by Greenbridge Partners Ltd.

In November 2018, Neo4j successfully secured $80M in Series E Funding led by One Peak Partners and Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with participation from other investors including Creandum, Eight Roads and Greenbridge Partners.

In June 2021, Neo4j announced another round of funding, $325M in Series F, led by Eurazeo and GV (Alphabet’s venture capital arm), which valued the company at over $2 billion making the company one of the best funded database companies.

In late 2024, the company began preparations for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq stock exchange, although the timing of the IPO will be dependent on broader market conditions.

Release history

Licensing and editions

Neo4j comes in five editions. Two are on-premises editions, Community (free) and Enterprise, and three are cloud-only editions: AuraDB Free, AuraDB Professional, and AuraDB Enterprise.

It is dual-licensed: GPL v3 (with parts of the code under AGPLv3 with Commons Clause), and a proprietary license. The Community Edition is free but is limited to running on one node only due to the lack of clustering and is without hot backups.

The Enterprise Edition unlocks these limitations, allowing for clustering, hot backups, and monitoring. The Enterprise Edition is available under a closed-source commercial license.

The licensing is controversial and has been the subject of at least one lawsuit.

Data structure

The data elements are nodes, edges which connect nodes to one another, and attributes of nodes and edges. Nodes and edges can be labelled. Labels can be used to narrow searches. As of version 2.0, indexing was added to Cypher with the introduction of schemas. Previously, indexes were supported separately from Cypher.

Criticisms

Database researcher Andy Pavlo from Carnegie Mellon University has questioned graph databases' decision to abandon the longstanding relational model in favor of a custom model. Researchers from CWI benchmarked a modified version of DuckDB against Neo4j on graph-related workloads and found that, despite being an extension of a relational database running SQL, their implementation outperforms Neo4j in a few specific tasks.

Neo4j sued PureThink, for utilizing a power created under the terms of the GNU AGPL, to remove a restrictive Commons clause that Neo4j had added to the AGPL license. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California made a decision on 2024-07-22 to impose $597,000 in actual damages on PureThink, having previously decided that PureThink had violated the DMCA by removing the Commons Clause from Neo4j's AGPL license, and that it had violated trademark law by continuing to use the name Neo4j in selling to government agencies.

References

References

1. Neubauer, Peter. (17 Feb 2010). "@sarkkine #Neo4j was developed as part of a CMS SaaS 2000-2007, became released OSS 2007 when Neo Technology spun out.".
2. Neo Technology. "Neo4j Graph Database".
3. Philip Rathle. (November 15, 2018). "Simplicity Wins: We're Shifting to an Open Core Licensing Model for Neo4j Enterprise Edition".
4. Emil Eifrem. (April 13, 2011). "Graph Databases, Licensing and MySQL".
5. "Bolt Protocol".
6. Todd Hoff. (June 13, 2009). "Neo4j - a Graph Database that Kicks Buttox". Possibility Outpost.
7. Gavin Terrill. (June 5, 2008). "Neo4j - an Embedded, Network Database". C4Media Inc.
8. "5.1. Transactional Cypher HTTP endpoint".
9. Dr. Jim Webber. (June 8, 2020). "A Personal History of Neo4j". YouTube.
10. (February 16, 2010). "The top 10 ways to get to know Neo4j". Neo4j Blog.
11. (December 11, 2013). "Neo4j 2.0 GA - Graphs for Everyone". Neo4j Blog.
12. (April 26, 2016). "Neo4j 3.0.0 - Neo4j Graph Database Platform". Release Date.
13. "Neo Technology closes $36 million in funding as graph database adoption soars". SiliconANGLE.
14. "Graph database platform Neo4j locks in $80 mln Series E". PE Hub Wire.
15. "Neo4j Series F funding".
16. Crichton, Danny. (2021-06-17). "Neo4j raises $325M as graph-based data analysis takes hold in enterprise".
17. "Payment Firm Neo4j Follows Klarna Path and Readies for US Listing". Bloomberg.com.
18. "Neo4j Supported Versions".
19. "Release Notes Archive".
20. "The Neo4j Editions".
21. Kuhn, Bradley M.. (March 30, 2022). "An Erroneous Preliminary Injunction Granted in Neo4j v. PureThink".
22. "The Neo4j Manual v2.1.5".
23. "The Neo4j Manual v1.8.3".
24. Pavlo, Andy. (2023-03-08). "Abandoning relational DB model like 'reinventing the wheel'".
25. (2023-01-08). "DuckPGQ: Efficient property graph queries in an analytical RDBMS".
26. (February 9, 2023). "SFC's Policy Fellow Files Expert Report in Neo4j v. PureThink; Case about the "further restrictions" removal provision of the AGPLv3 continues after counterclaim filing".
27. (2024-07-22). "NEO4J, INC., et al., Plaintiffs, v. PURETHINK, LLC, et al., Defendants.: Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law".