The Neo4j Manual v2.0.25.17. The Graphity activity stream model

This is an approach for scaling the retrieval of activity streams in a friend graph put forward by Rene Pickard as Graphity. In short, a linked list is created for every persons friends in the order that the last activities of these friends have occured. When new activities occur for a friend, all the ordered friend lists that this friend is part of are reordered, transferring computing load to the time of new event updates instead of activity stream reads.

Tip This approach of course makes excessive use of relationship types. This needs to be taken into consideration when designing a production system with this approach. See Section 15.5, “Capacity” for the maximum number of relationship types.

To find the activity stream for a person, just follow the linked list of the friend list, and retrieve the needed amount of activities form the respective activity list of the friends.

Query. 

MATCH p=(me { name: 'Jane' })-[:jane_knows*]->(friend),(friend)-[:has]->(status)
RETURN me.name, friend.name, status.name, length(p)
ORDER BY length(p)

The returns the activity stream for Jane.

Try this query live. create (_0 {`name`:"Bill"}) create (_1 {`name`:"Ted_s1"}) create (_2 {`name`:"Bill_s1"}) create (_3 {`name`:"Ted_s2"}) create (_4 {`name`:"Bill_s2"}) create (_5 {`name`:"Jane"}) create (_6 {`name`:"Joe_s1"}) create (_7 {`name`:"Bob"}) create (_8 {`name`:"Ted"}) create (_9 {`name`:"Joe_s2"}) create (_10 {`name`:"Bob_s1"}) create (_11 {`name`:"Joe"}) create _0-[:`has`]->_2 create _0-[:`jane_knows`]->_11 create _1-[:`next`]->_3 create _2-[:`next`]->_4 create _5-[:`jane_knows`]->_0 create _6-[:`next`]->_9 create _7-[:`has`]->_10 create _7-[:`bob_knows`]->_8 create _8-[:`has`]->_1 create _8-[:`bob_knows`]->_0 create _11-[:`has`]->_6 create _11-[:`jane_knows`]->_7 MATCH p=(me {name: 'Jane'})-[:jane_knows*]->(friend), (friend)-[:has]->(status) RETURN me.name, friend.name, status.name, length(p) ORDER BY length(p)

Figure 5.20. Graph