Different property values based on the direction of the relationship

[aws_admin_maste]

I need to model 'Friend' relationship in neo4j. Relationship may have types like 'Buddy' or 'Friend'. For example, A and B are friends. A considers B as a 'Buddy' and B considers A as a 'Friend'. I see two options to model this.

1. Create two relationships. A --> B with property 'type' = 'Buddy' and B --> A with property 'type' = 'Friend'.
2. Create one relationship with two properties 'Forward_Type' and 'Backward_Type'. If the relationship is from A to B, 'Forward_Type' = 'Buddy' and 'Backward_Type' will be 'Friend'

Please let me know which one is good in terms of traversing complexity/performance. Thank you.

[shan]

I'd suggest you create two edges:

CREATE (A)-[:BUDDY]->(B)
CREATE (B)-[:FRIEND]->(A)

Note that BUDDY and FRIEND are not properties here, they are relationship types.

[aws_admin_maste]

If we create two relationship types, is it still possible to traverse people regardless of the type of the relation? For example, to retrieve all people who know person A.

[mark_andrews]

MATCH (n)-[:BUDDY|FRIEND]->(A) RETURN n;

It's much faster this way as well since you can't index relationship properties.

[aws_admin_maste]

Thank you very much for the help