GraphConnect Europe 2017 Craig Taverner, Neo4j

1. Craig Taverner
Cypher Team Lead
Performance Improvements
in Neo4j 3.2

2. Craig Taverner
craig@neo4j.com
@craigtaverner
Craig Taverner
craig@neo4j.com
@craigtaverner

3. Native Graph Performance Improvements
• Native Label index: Writes now 30-300% faster
• Composite indexes: Faster multi-property queries
• Reachability Queries: Can improve by orders of magnitude
• Compiled Cypher runtime: Speeds queries up to 300%
• Neo4j Browser: Ground-up rewrite yields snappier
performance

4. Cypher Parser
Performance Improvements in Neo4j 3.2
• Native Label Index
• Composite Indexes
• Compiled Runtime
• Reachability (Pruning Var Expand)
• Solving OR Using Indexes
Cypher Planner
Cypher Runtime
Neo4j Kernel
Storage
CompositeIndexes
Compiled
Native
Label
Index
PruningVXOr

5. Native Label Index
• New GBPTree Index
• Designed for
concurrent read and
write load
• Performance
• Similar for reads
• Faster for writes

6. Composite Indexes
Full-stack generalisation of schema indexes to multiple properties
• Cypher:
CREATE INDEX ON :Person(firstname,lastname)
MATCH (n:Person)
WHERE n.firstname = 'Joe' AND n.lastname = 'Soap' RETURN n;
• Core API:
gds.schema().indexFor(Label.label("Person"))
.on("firstname")
.on("lastname")
.create();

7. Composite Indexes
Cypher queries will use the composite index if the following conditions exist:
• Predicates must exist for all properties in the index and be equality
predicates for the index to be used.
• Predicates for existence, range, starts-with, ends-with and contains will not
be able to use the index (yet).
CREATE INDEX ON :Person(firstname, lastname);
// Direct composite index search on multiple property equality
MATCH (n:Person) WHERE n.firstname = 'Joe' AND n.lastname = 'Soap' RETURN n;
// No use of composite index (yet)
MATCH (n:Person) WHERE n.firstname = 'Joe' AND exists(n.lastname) RETURN n;
MATCH (n:Person) WHERE n.firstname = 'Joe' AND n.lastname STARTS WITH 'Soap' RETURN n;
MATCH (n:Person) WHERE n.firstname = 'Joe' RETURN n;

8. Composite Indexes

9. Reachability Queries - Pruning Var Expand
MATCH (kevin {name:'Kevin Bacon'})-[*1..5]-(actor)
RETURN DISTINCT actor

10. Compiled Runtime
• Coverage
• 50% of Cypher Operators supported
• Cypher Benchmarks Suite 15% supported
• LDBC suite 18% supported
• Does this mean many simple and few complex?
• Performance
• Operators 2x to 20x faster
• Queries … well it depends… let’s say 2x for supported queries

11. Compiled Runtime - Operators

12. Compiled Runtime - Operators

13. Compiled Runtime - LDBC Benchmarks

14. Compiled Runtime

15. Solving OR using Indexes
• Consider AND
MATCH (n:X)
WHERE n.firstName = $first AND n.lastName = $last
RETURN n
• Solved with Index and Filter - FAST
• But what happens with OR
MATCH (n:X)
WHERE n.firstName = $first OR n.lastName = $last
RETURN n
• 3.1: Solved with LabelScan and Filter - SLOW
• 3.2: Solved with two IndexSeeks - FAST

16. Solving OR using indexes

17. Resources
• Compiled Runtime Coverage
Performance Improvements
in Neo4j 3.2