Modeling complex attributes

[pingelsan]

In a project, I need to keep track of complex attributes of things, composed of (at least) a value and a unit, or even a value, a unit (like '10 mm'), allowed tolerances, min and max values etc.

What are the experiences in the community with using either properties on a node (prop1_val, prop1_unit, prop2_val, ... etc) or nodes describing the attribute (where the property names can stay the same for all the nodes).

My understanding is that there will be a tradeoff for 'self-containedness' vs. speed & ease of querying. I'm grateful for any insights!

best,
Christoph

[MuddyBootsCode]

I think you're going to better off putting the properties on one node rather than using other nodes to describe the properties. That way you only have to query the one node to get the information you want rather than trying to aggregate a number of nodes to get the properties.

[tim_reynolds]

If you mean that the 'thing' node would contain the properties, then would it be a useful intermediate step to contain all properties together on a 'properties' node linked to the 'thing' by a HAS_PROPERTIES relationship?

The inclusion of a relationship that can hold an additional dimension of data could be useful.

[jonaslm899]

Hi Pingelsan,

that's funny to read about your question while I just posted something that might interest you

Attributes as nodes? Modeling

Hi everyone, I do believe re-usability in a graph structure should promote uniqueness for attributes (at least, on a theoretical ground) but I'm really making my first steps with Neo4j. So I was wondering if much more experienced developers could tell me about the pros and cons of using nodes instead of keys and putting the values (and eventual units) in the relation that ties them together ? E.g: (:Class {name:"water"})-[:Relation {val:"138",unit:"C"}]->(:Attr {name:"temperature"}) Well of…

[alec0416]

Hi @pingelsan and @jonaslm899 , 

I just getting going with Neo4j and am having a similar question arise. I was wondering if either you settled on a solution that you liked. Right now, my plan is to take the (prop1_val, prop1_unit, prop2_val, ... etc) approach