Julian's Polymath Explorations

Putting it All Together : a Technology Stack on top of a (Neo4j) Graph Database (UPDATED June 2024)  For many practical use cases, one needs a full data-management solution, not just a database.   So, armed with the Schema Layer discussed in the previous part , the next natural step is to add a web API and possibly a User Interface . This article is part of a growing,  ongoing  series  on Graph Databases and Neo4j   The Web API Layer / Data Manager The Web API Layer ("Data Manager")  is in some ways the most straightforward layer - because the "heavy lifting" is done by the Schema Layer.   I've been involved in projects that utilized an inadequate Schema Layer - and in those situations the API Layer ends up taking on an immense amount of responsibility that don't logically belong there; the end result being a lot of difficult, error-prone and non-modular development that feels like "pulling teeth"! By contrast, with a...

[UPDATED MAY 2022]  D3.js is a very powerful visualization tool, especially for specialized/custom needs...  On the flip side, it's rather hard to use - with a steep learning curve. Even worse if one also wants interactivity ! But why is D3 so hard/clunky to use?  And what can be done about it? Spoiler alert: Vue.js (or other modern front-end framework) to the rescue - if done right... All code in the examples is available in this GitHub repository . The Root of the Problem In a nutshell, what makes D3 awkward to use is that, for historical reasons, it tries to do too much : most painfully, it uses an old way to do direct DOM manipulation (i.e. restructuring the page layout) - an operation that nowadays is superbly handled in a far more friendly way by modern front-end frameworks, such as Vue.js Document Object Model ( DOM ) is a programming interface for web documents.  In simple terms, it's the structure of the elements on a web page (text, images, etc.) Let ...