memgraph/docs/user_technical/quick-start.md
Marko Budiselic 07018cf426 Add links to other pages from end-user tech documentation
Reviewers: teon.banek

Reviewed By: teon.banek

Differential Revision: https://phabricator.memgraph.io/D1465
2018-07-03 14:48:40 +02:00

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Quick Start

This chapter outlines installing and running Memgraph, as well as executing basic queries against the database.

Installation

The Memgraph binary is offered as:

  • Debian package for Debian 9 (Stretch);
  • RPM package for CentOS 7 and
  • Docker image.

After downloading the binary, proceed to the corresponding section below.

NOTE: Currently, newer versions of Memgraph are not backward compatible with older versions. This is mainly noticeable by unsupported loading of storage snapshots between different versions.

Docker Installation

Before proceeding with the installation, please install the Docker engine on the system. Instructions on how to install Docker can be found on the official Docker website. Memgraph Docker image was built with Docker version 1.12 and should be compatible with all later versions.

After installing and running Docker, download the Memgraph Docker image and import it with the following command.

docker load -i /path/to/memgraph-<version>-docker.tar.gz

Memgraph is then started with another docker command.

docker run -p 7687:7687 \
  -v mg_lib:/var/lib/memgraph -v mg_log:/var/log/memgraph -v mg_etc:/etc/memgraph \
  memgraph

On success, expect to see output similar to the following.

Starting 8 workers
Server is fully armed and operational
Listening on 0.0.0.0 at 7687

Memgraph is now ready to process queries, you may now proceed to querying. To stop Memgraph, press Ctrl-c.

Memgraph configuration is available in Docker's named volume mg_etc. On Linux systems it should be in /var/lib/docker/volumes/mg_etc/_data/memgraph.conf. After changing the configuration, Memgraph needs to be restarted.

Note about named volumes

In case named volumes are reused between different versions of Memgraph, a user has to be careful because Docker will overwrite a folder within the container with existing data from the host machine. In the case where a new file is introduced, or two versions of Memgraph are not compatible, the new feature won't work or Memgraph won't be able to work correctly. The easiest way to solve the issue is to use another named volume or to remove existing named volume from the host with the following command.

docker volume rm <volume_name>

Named Docker volumes used in this documentation are: mg_etc, mg_log and mg_lib. E.g. to avoid any configuration issues between different Memgraph versions, docker volume rm mg_etc can be executed before running a new container.

Another valid option is to try to migrate your existing volume to a newer version of Memgraph. In case of any issues, send an email to tech@memgraph.com.

Note for OS X/macOS Users

Although unlikely, some OS X/macOS users might experience minor difficulties after following the Docker installation instructions. Instead of running on localhost, a Docker container for Memgraph might be running on a custom IP address. Fortunately, that IP address can be found using the following algorithm:

  1. Find out the container ID of the Memgraph container

By issuing the command docker ps the user should get an output similar to the following:

CONTAINER ID        IMAGE               COMMAND                  CREATED        ...
9397623cd87e        memgraph            "/usr/lib/memgraph/m…"   2 seconds ago  ...

At this point, it is important to remember the container ID of the Memgraph image. In our case, that is 9397623cd87e.

  1. Use the container ID to retrieve an IP of the container
docker inspect -f '{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' 9397623cd87e

The command above should yield the sought IP. If that IP does not correspond to localhost, it should be used instead of localhost when firing up the neo4j-client in the querying section.

Debian Package Installation

After downloading Memgraph as a Debian package, install it by running the following.

dpkg -i /path/to/memgraph_<version>.deb

If the installation was successful, Memgraph should already be running. To make sure that is true, start it explicitly with the command:

systemctl start memgraph

To verify that Memgraph is running, run the following command.

journalctl --unit memgraph

It is expected to see something like the following output.

Nov 23 13:40:13 hostname memgraph[14654]: Starting 8 BoltS workers
Nov 23 13:40:13 hostname memgraph[14654]: BoltS server is fully armed and operational
Nov 23 13:40:13 hostname memgraph[14654]: BoltS listening on 0.0.0.0 at 7687

Memgraph is now ready to process queries, you may now proceed to querying. To shutdown Memgraph server, issue the following command.

systemctl stop memgraph

Memgraph configuration is available in /etc/memgraph/memgraph.conf. After changing the configuration, Memgraph needs to be restarted.

RPM Package Installation

If you downloaded the RPM package of Memgraph, you can install it by running the following command.

rpm -U /path/to/memgraph-<version>.rpm

After the successful installation, Memgraph can be started as a service. To do so, type the following command.

systemctl start memgraph

To verify that Memgraph is running, run the following command.

journalctl --unit memgraph

It is expected to see something like the following output.

Nov 23 13:40:13 hostname memgraph[14654]: Starting 8 BoltS workers
Nov 23 13:40:13 hostname memgraph[14654]: BoltS server is fully armed and operational
Nov 23 13:40:13 hostname memgraph[14654]: BoltS listening on 0.0.0.0 at 7687

Memgraph is now ready to process queries, you may now proceed to querying. To shutdown Memgraph server, issue the following command.

systemctl stop memgraph

Memgraph configuration is available in /etc/memgraph/memgraph.conf. After changing the configuration, Memgraph needs to be restarted.

Querying

Memgraph supports the openCypher query language which has been developed by Neo4j. The language is currently going through a vendor-independent standardization process. It's a declarative language developed specifically for interaction with graph databases.

The easiest way to execute openCypher queries against Memgraph, is using Neo4j's command-line tool. The command-line neo4j-client can be installed as described on the official website.

After installing neo4j-client, connect to the running Memgraph instance by issuing the following shell command.

neo4j-client -u "" -p ""  localhost 7687

After the client has started it should present a command prompt similar to:

neo4j-client 2.1.3
Enter `:help` for usage hints.
Connected to 'neo4j://@localhost:7687'
neo4j>

At this point it is possible to execute openCypher queries on Memgraph. Each query needs to end with the ; (semicolon) character. For example:

CREATE (u:User {name: "Alice"})-[:Likes]->(m:Software {name: "Memgraph"});

The above will create 2 nodes in the database, one labeled "User" with name "Alice" and the other labeled "Software" with name "Memgraph". It will also create a relationship that "Alice" likes "Memgraph".

To find created nodes and relationships, execute the following query:

MATCH (u:User)-[r]->(x) RETURN u, r, x;

Supported Languages

If users wish to query Memgraph programmatically, they can do so using the Bolt protocol. Bolt was designed for efficient communication with graph databases and Memgraph supports Version 1 of the protocol. Bolt protocol drivers for some popular programming languages are listed below:

We have included some basic usage examples for some of the supported languages in the Drivers section.

Telemetry

Telemetry is an automated process by which some useful data is collected at a remote point. At Memgraph, we use telemetry for the sole purpose of improving our product, thereby collecting some data about the machine that executes the database (CPU, memory, OS and kernel information) as well as some data about the database runtime (CPU usage, memory usage, vertices and edges count).

Here at Memgraph, we deeply care about the privacy of our users and do not collect any sensitive information. If users wish to disable Memgraph's telemetry features, they can easily do so by either altering the line in /etc/memgraph/memgraph.conf that enables telemetry (--telemetry-enabled=true) into --telemetry-enabled=false, or by including the --telemetry-enabled=false as a command-line argument when running the executable.

Where to Next

To learn more about the openCypher language, visit openCypher Query Language chapter in this document. For real-world examples of how to use Memgraph visit Examples chapter. Details on what can be stored in Memgraph are in Data Storage chapter.

We welcome and encourage your feedback!