Introduction to Graph Databases
February 10, 2025 @ 10:00 am
Graph databases are at the frontier of data science, humanities, and AI computing. Built to handle dense, highly interconnected data, graph databases underpin many social networks, big data applications, and new research initiatives, but are still not as widely understood or deployed as traditional relational databases. Building off the Introduction to Databases (Part 1) workshop, this session introduces graph databases, with a focus on Neo4j and Wikibase. Spanning two hours, the first half of the workshop will focus on graph database fundamentals, the network data model, and the differences between graph and traditional SQL relational databases. We will then demonstrate common tasks and procedures in Neo4j and Wikibase, and show how to use graph databases as a backend to data visualization and manipulation in python / juptyter notebooks. This workshop assumes that participants have general knowledge of relational databases or previous participation in part 1 of the database series. Participants will need to install a working copy of Neo4j Desktop Community Edition by visiting https://neo4j.com/deployment-center/, scrolling to the section Neo4j Desktop, then download and install the program.