Go Serverless with a Graph Database

By Steve Roberts

AWS Neptune is a fully managed database service. Discover ways to leverage graph data by creating a Graph Database stack and a simple web app.

2.5 hours
  • 33 Lessons
  • 6 Course Quizzes

About the course

Hello Cloud Gurus,

Graph Databases like Amazon Neptune are incredibly powerful but relatively underappreciated. In this course, we will dive in to Neptune to see how and why it might be right for your Serverless applications. At the end of this course you will be able to spin up a Graph Database stack and a simple web application to leverage your graph data. We’ll achieve this with serverless framework and cloudformation, meaning you learn a lot more than just one AWS service in this course!

The app we build is also great fun and very practical. It’s a face categorisation app using family photographs (you can use your own if you like, or use the supplied images), leveraging data that we will generate from the Amazon Rekognition service. With this tool we might just be able to finally sort out those hundreds of thousands of family photos that we all have lying around. Now you can easily find all those photos of your Grand Aunt quickly and accurately!

This is a beginner to intermediate-level course. We will be writing a bit of code and setting up (and removing) quite a lot of infrastructure in AWS. Prior coding experience is nice to have. The course will definitely be easier to follow if you have a bit of an understanding of JavaScript (Node) and CloudFormation. For those who don’t have this experience, don’t worry – at key points in the course when we write code or modify CloudFormation templates, we will point out relevant chapters in other A Cloud Guru courses that will help you learn these areas in more detail.

In this course, you’ll learn:

  • What graph databases are, and how they differ from other data storage and why/when to use them.
  • How to set up and run an AWS Neptune instance.
  • How to use the Gremlin and SPARQL query languages.
  • How to bulk upload data into AWS Neptune.
  • How to use Amazon Rekognition to analyze photos for faces.
  • How to create a simple Node.js API and UI endpoint for interacting with your graph data in a web interface.

So what are you waiting for, Cloud Gurus! If you work in a software development team, you are a tech manager or a business person who is technically minded, join me in this course to discover what graph databases are and what they can do for you and your serverless project.

  • Chapter 1 9 Lessons Introduction and Overview of Graph Data Theory 50:18

    Welcome

    2:13

    Course Overview

    2:46

    Graph Databases and the Face Categorising Project

    4:26

    Amazon Neptune 10,000 Feet View

    3:03

    Amazon Neptune Graph Models

    3:42

    Property Graph Model

    2:23

    Resource Description Framework (RDF) Graph Model

    5:58

    Demo: Getting Set Up for this Course

    10:47

    Chapter 1 Quiz

    15:00 Quiz
  • Chapter 2 6 Lessons Playing with Amazon Neptune Query Languages 40:39

    Chapter Introduction

    1:07

    Apache Tinkerpop and the Console

    3:29

    Introducing the Gremlin Query Language

    6:01

    Demo: Using the Apache Tinkerpop Console

    8:12

    An Alternate Query Language - SPARQL

    6:50

    Chapter 2 Quiz

    15:00 Quiz
  • Chapter 3 9 Lessons Setting Up an App that will Interact with Neptune 49:00

    Chapter Introduction

    4:37

    Understanding the Neptune and API Stacks

    5:37

    Understanding the Neptune CloudFormation

    6:58

    Understanding the API CloudFormation

    8:17

    Demo: Spin Up the Neptune Stack

    2:51

    Demo: Spin Up the API Stack

    2:28

    Cleaning Up to Save $$$

    0:53

    Demo: Removing the Stacks

    2:19

    Chapter 3 Quiz

    15:00 Quiz
  • Chapter 4 8 Lessons Creating a Useful Dataset 45:05

    Chapter Introduction

    1:33

    Creating Graph Data with Rekognition

    3:49

    Understanding the Rekognition Stack

    6:12

    Demo: Creating Graph Data from Rekognition

    3:35

    Updates to the Neptune and API Stacks for Loading Data

    4:21

    Demo: Loading Data into Neptune

    6:38

    Rekognition Data that Suits RDF

    3:57

    Chapter 4 Quiz

    15:00 Quiz
  • Chapter 5 4 Lessons Working with our Data via the App 36:47

    Neptune Web UI Overview

    4:07

    Demo: Modifying the Query Lambda

    5:54

    Demo: Running the Neptune Web UI

    11:46

    Chapter 5 Quiz

    15:00 Quiz
  • Chapter 6 3 Lessons Conclusion 24:25

    Building on our Serverless Graph Database Solution

    7:55

    Thank You and Goodbye

    1:30

    Chapter 6 Quiz

    15:00 Quiz

What you will need

  • Coding for Cloud 101 (A Cloud Guru course)

  • Introduction to AWS CloudFormation (A Cloud Guru course)

  • The EC2 section of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate (A Cloud Guru course)

What you can expect

  • You will be able to identify use cases where graph data is an appropriate data storage solution

  • You will be able to demonstrate and understanding of how to work with graph data using popular query languages

  • You will be able to demonstrate a familiarity with why complex AWS infrastructure is often needed, particularly with secure managed services like Neptune.

  • You will be able to create an API and user interface to make graph data analysis accessible to you and your stakeholders.

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