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Graph database interoperability

Ladybug supports interoperability with various graph databases, allowing you to migrate data from external graph systems into Ladybug for querying and analysis.

Neo4j

Ladybug provides a Neo4j extension that enables direct migration of data from Neo4j databases. This includes node labels, relationship types, and properties.

For detailed instructions on how to migrate data from Neo4j, see the Neo4j extension documentation.

Quick example

CALL NEO4J_MIGRATE(
    "http://localhost:7474",
    "neo4j",
    "password",
    ["User", "Product"],
    ["FOLLOWS", "PURCHASED"]
);

This imports:

  • Nodes with labels User and Product as node tables
  • Relationships with types FOLLOWS and PURCHASED as relationship tables

GraphAr

Apache GraphAr is an open source, standard data file format for graph data storage and retrieval. It is designed for efficient storage and out-of-core querying of large-scale graph data, using chunking, columnar storage, and CSR/CSC semantics.

To use GraphAr data in Ladybug, convert it to Icebug format first:

Terminal window
uvx icebug-format --graphar <path to graphar archive>

This generates a directory of Parquet files plus a Cypher schema file that can be loaded directly with lbug -i. See the Icebug format section for details.

Icebug format

Icebug is a Ladybug-native graph-aware Parquet format designed for ingestion-free graph analytics. Unlike general-purpose Parquet files, Icebug preserves graph structure (node and relationship tables) and enables direct querying without preprocessing.

Generating Icebug files

Use the icebug-format tool to generate Icebug files from existing databases:

Terminal window
# From a DuckDB database
uvx icebug-format --source-db demo-db.duckdb --schema schema.cypher


# From a GraphAr archive
uvx icebug-format --graphar <path to archive>

This generates a directory of Parquet files (for nodes and relationships) plus a Cypher schema file.

Using Icebug files

Start Ladybug with the generated schema file using the -i flag:

Terminal window
lbug -i csr_graph/schema.cypher

Then query the graph directly:

MATCH (a:User)-[b:LivesIn]->(c:City)
RETURN a.*, b.*, c.*;