Hi, I am a software guy from Bay Area

Any recommended tutorial book for Python coder ?

Morning cchang95014. Welcome to the Neo4j community!

Are you looking for a book on straight Python, one for a Python user to learn Cypher, or one to incorporate Cypher and Python using something like Jupyter?

Julie,
Thanks for replying !
Python user to learn Cypher and/or Cypher and Python using something like Jupyter will be great !
cchang95014

The courses on the Graph Academy will help you get your feet wet and introduce the language/syntax. Section 2.2 of the Developer Manual also offers a nice summary. One of my favorite 'what's possible and how do you do it' blogs is Graph People.

I tried a couple of the print books. What I found most helpful was the Cypher Manual. You should be able to get up and running after going through Sections 2 and 3. Then reference what you need when you need it from the other sections. Once you get the hang of the basics, you'll want to look at the APOC library and Graph Algorithms.

Cypher is pretty similar to SQL if you're familiar with that. There are a couple of important differences though. The two biggest in my opinion are 1.) Pattern matching and 2.) The differences between graph and relational databases.

I'd include a link for the second point, but can't think of one off the top of my head that really illustrates the differences and the challenges those differences present. The best thing I can come up with right now is Section 2.2 of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's Network Science book. Just keep in mind that the fundamental conceptualization of graph doesn't work quite like the relational database or spreadsheet tables that we're all used to. It's a network of interconnected nodes.

As for using it in conjunction with Jupyter, I've had good success using the py2neo package. Once you install it, you basically say 'database = my database' and 'df = my query which returns results as a table'. One of the functions returns the results as a pandas Dataframe. I believe you can also use NetworkX data structures to keep it as a graph structure, but I haven't done that.

Julie,
Yeah, I am reading the manual now. Also thanks for all the other pointers. I will study them up !
Regards !
CW