Neo4J is still a relational database. […] Relationships are also first-class citizens in graph databases, and in some cases are your focus.

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Many are confusing the relational model for relationships between entities. In the paper “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks”, E.F.Codd writes:

The term relation is used here in its accepted mathematical sense. Given sets S₁, , … , S_n, (not necessarily distinct), R is a relation on these n sets if it is a set of n-tuples each of which has its first element from S₁, its second element from S₂, and so on.’ […] More concisely, R is a subset of the Cartesian product S₁X S₂X … X S_n

Codd’s paper is only 11 pages long, so if you haven’t checked it in a while, maybe it is time to do so.

The relational view (or model) of data described in Section 1 appears to be superior in several respects to the graph or network model presently in vogue for non-inferential systems.

This was written in 1970 and things are changing again.

Original title and link: The Relational Model and Graph Databases (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)