Angshuman Talukdar shows how to use neo4j to solve minimum weighted distance problems:
A sample dataset is created in Neo4j using the CREATE clause in Cypher as given in Query 1 (create clause in Cypher). This loads the data into Neo4j and generates the graph database as shown in Figure 2.
Neo4j has a lot of graph algorithms shipped with it as a package and those are accessible only from the JAVA API. Implementing some of these algorithms in Cypher is quite complex and time consuming. From Neo4j 3.x, the concept of user defined procedures had been introduced called APOC (Awesome Procedures On Cypher). Those are custom implementations of certain functionality, that can’t be (easily) expressed in Cypher itself. The APOC library consists of many (about 300) procedures to help with many different tasks in areas like data integration, graph algorithms or data conversion.
Graph databases aren’t common, but they can be very useful for certain questions like the one Angshuman solves.