Neo4j Inc. is bringing its graph database technology to the business intelligence sphere with the addition of a connector that presents live graph datasets into popular BI platforms.

The platforms include those from Tableau Software Inc., Looker Data Sciences Inc., Tibco Software Inc., Spotfire Inc., Oracle Corp. and MicroStrategy Inc.

Graph databases are a type of NoSQL database that represent data as connected objects rather than rows and columns. Connections can be traversed to quickly find relationships, making the technology useful in scenarios with many inter-dependencies.

The Neo4j BI Connector enables data stored in a graph structure to be positioned alongside traditional data stored in relational or NoSQL databases for use in BI modeling. Users can create visualizations and dashboards that combine both data types, Neo4j said.

This combination could enable an analyst, for example, to discover that a low-value retail customer is actually the chief executive of one of the bank’s largest commercial customers and therefore deserves special treatment or to trace multiple fraud instances to find out how they’re connected to each other.

Graph databases have been hot recently because of their unique ability to quickly traverse relationships that would be difficult or impossible to represent using relational joins. However, the technology has been constrained by incompatibilities between the query languages that are needed to navigate them and the ubiquitous SQL standard.

Neo4j’s approach uses the Java Database Connectivity standard to translate SQL queries into its native Cypher language, enabling users to select graph data in the same way they would select relational and NoSQL data as well as to retrieve data from Neo4j and convert it to tabular form (pictured). The connector is available as a free download.

Competitor TigerGraph Inc., addressed a similar need with a new release of its graph engine announced last week that incorporates a visual query builder to make graph data more accessible.

Neo4j is the most-used graph database, according to DB-Engines, in part because it’s available under an open-source license. The company has raised $160 million in funding.

Image: Neo4j