Relationship types

Relationship types achieve something similar to what you do with node labels, but with relationships. The purpose of doing so, however, is mostly very different. Relationship types are mandatory properties of relationships (every relationship must have one and only one type--two nodes can be linked by several relations) and will be used during complex, deep traversals across the graph, when only certain kinds of paths from node to node are deemed important by a specific query.

This should give you a good understanding of the basic data model that we will be using during the remainder of this book. Neo4j implements a very well-documented version of the property graph database, and as we will see later, is well-suited for a wide variety of different use cases. Let's explore the reasons for using a graph database like Neo4j a bit more before proceeding.