My proposal for code4lib on this topic was not selected, but I was invited
to give the same talk at the Berkeley Information School Friday afternoon
seminar last week (but I had about 40 mins rather than 20).

Here are the notes from my talk last Friday:

http://tingletech.github.com/296a-1-2012/

Also, I did some quick screenrs of what I would have talked about (but I
didn't really practice, I would have prepared more for a real talk, these
are sort of phoning it in)
http://www.screenr.com/1lws
http://www.screenr.com/pfws
http://www.screenr.com/Pg9s

Here is a page that is powered by Tinkerpop/Neo4J/rexster in "production"

http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/view?mode=RGraph&docId=franklin-benjamin-1706-1790-cr.xml

I've found tinkerpop, gremlin, and rexster to be very easy to work with,
and the tinkerpop list is very helpful.

I'm also using a triple store to power a SPARQL interface:
http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/sparql/


On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Chris Fitzpatrick
<[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hey Kent,
>
> Awesome. thanks for the info. So, using gremlin, are you using some of
> the other Tinkerpop technologies?
>
> And, haha, in researching stuff this weekend, I actually saw an email
> you sent to the neo4j google group about the lucene boosting issue…
>
> I started playing around with RDF.rb , and was really impressed,
> although using that doesn't give you all the stuff tinkerpop does.
>
> b,chris.
>
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Kent Fitch <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > AustLit ( http://www.austlit.edu.au ) is in the early stages of a
> > migration from javaServlets/xslt/oracle to java/neo4j/gremlin.  The
> > web version of AustLit was developed in 2000 based on FRBR with a
> > strong emphasis on events realised with a topic map model, so the sql
> > implementation is close to a triple-store.  More information on the
> > details are here: http://www.austlit.edu.au/about ,
> > http://www.austlit.edu.au/about/metadata and
> > http://www.austlit.edu.au:7777/DataModel/index.html ("ALEG" was the
> > working name for AustLit redevelopment in 2000).
> >
> > Last year a decision was taken to move AustLit from a subscription
> > service to open access, and from updates being performed solely by
> > dedicated bibliographers and researchers (members of various AustLit
> > teams distributed across Australia) to include community
> > contributions, so rather than work these changes into a 12 year old
> > system, it was decided to start afresh with an approach which would
> > more naturally support the AustLit data model.
> >
> > So, we experimented with Neo4j, and were impressed with its
> > performance.  For example, loading our current data from Oracle into
> > an empty neo4j database takes about 30 minutes (using a
> > run-of-the-mill 3 year-old server), producing a graph of 14m nodes and
> > 20m relationships.  Performing custom indexing of this data using the
> > built-in Lucene integration takes about 2.5 hours, but that's a
> > function of the extensive indexing we're performing.
> >
> > As you'd probably expect, we do have some "issues" we're working
> > through, such as
> >
> > - integration with Lucene is "abstracted" by the neo4j index
> > interface, so it is difficult or impossible to use some native Lucene
> > features.  For example, boosting index nodes based on their inherent
> > importance and using this boost in lucene to determine relevance
> > cannot be done.
> >
> > - our data model is complex, and added to the requirements to version
> > every node and relationship (ie, record changes, allow rollback), our
> > graph traversals are correspondingly complex, but I suspect as we
> > become more familar with graph traversal idioms in gremlin and cypher,
> > they'll become as "normal" as sql
> >
> > But so far, neo4j seems fast and robust, and we're optimistic!
> >
> > Kent Fitch
> >
> > On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Chris Fitzpatrick
> > <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >> Hej hej,
> >>
> >> Is anyone is using neo4j in their library projects.
> >>
> >> If the answer is "ja", I would be very interested in hearing how it's
> going.
> >> How are you using it?
> >> Is it something that is in production and is adding value or is it
> >> more a skunkworks-type effort?
> >> What languages are you using? Are you using an ORM (like Rails or
> Django)?
> >>
> >> I would also be really interested in hearing thoughts, stories, and
> >> opinions about the idea of using a graph db or triple store in their
> >> stack.
> >>
> >> tack!
> >>
> >> b, fitz.
>