{"id":790,"date":"2019-06-08T21:19:37","date_gmt":"2019-06-08T21:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcel-jan.eu\/datablog\/?p=790"},"modified":"2019-06-09T09:34:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-09T09:34:58","slug":"loading-rocket-data-in-a-graph-database-neo4j","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcel-jan.eu\/datablog\/2019\/06\/08\/loading-rocket-data-in-a-graph-database-neo4j\/","title":{"rendered":"Neo4J: Loading rocket data in a graph database"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I first learned about graph databases, like Neo4J, I didn’t get it. That’s how I always start with new technology: not getting at all why people getting so enthusiastic about them. Then I read “Seven Databases in Seven Weeks, 2nd edition” (as reviewed in January<\/a>). It describes Neo4J as a “whiteboard friendly”. Any diagram with boxes and lines you could draw on a whiteboard, can be stored in Neo4J. After reading the first paragraphs about Neo4J, I totally got why graph databases are very interesting.<\/p>\n

As usual, I started following a course on Neo4J to get acquainted with the product. Well there was a course on Neo4J on Udemy.com and I followed it. But it was 3 years old and some of the code it teached, is already obsolete. So the less I say about that, the better. But I did learn some Cypher, the language used in Neo4J, and I later learned the more modern versions of the commands to get stuff done.<\/p>\n

Next phase: do a project with it. It took me some time to think of interesting astronomy or space related data in it. Eventually I stumbled on a dataset that has been around and maintained for a long time. At least since I discovered when I just got on the Internet around 1993. It’s called Jonathan’s Space Page<\/a> now. And the maintainer, Jonathan McDowell, still keeps the list of orbital space launches<\/a> and list of satellites<\/a> ever launched quite up to date.<\/p>\n

And eventually I did manage to load this data in Neo4J and here is my video about that:<\/p>\n