ArangoDB

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About the Tutorial

Apparently, the world is becoming more and more connected. And at some point in the
very near future, your kitchen bar may well be able to recommend your favorite brands of
whiskey! This recommended information may come from retailers, or equally likely it can
be suggested from friends on Social Networks; whatever it is, you will be able to see the
benefits of using graph databases, if you like the recommendations.

This tutorial explains the various aspects of ArangoDB which is a major contender in the
landscape of graph databases. Starting with the basics of ArangoDB which focuses on the
installation and basic concepts of ArangoDB, it gradually moves on to advanced topics
such as CRUD operations and AQL. The last few chapters in this tutorial will help you
understand how to deploy ArangoDB as a single instance and/or using Docker.

Audience
This tutorial is meant for those who are interested in learning ArangoDB as a Multimodel
Database. Graph databases are spreading like wildfire across the industry and are making
an impact on the development of new generation applications. So anyone who is interested
in learning different aspects of ArangoDB, should go through this tutorial.

Prerequisites
Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have the basic knowledge of Database,
SQL, Graph Theory, and JavaScript.

Copyright & Disclaimer

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Ltd. provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of our
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in this tutorial, please notify us at [email protected]

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Table of Contents
About the Tutorial .................................................................................................................................... i

Audience .................................................................................................................................................. i

Prerequisites ............................................................................................................................................ i

Copyright & Disclaimer............................................................................................................................. i

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................................... ii

1. ARANGODB – A MULTI-MODEL FIRST DATABASE ................................................................ 1

Layered vs. Native Multi-Model Databases ............................................................................................. 1

The Need for Multimodal Database ........................................................................................................ 1

ArangoDB ─ Features............................................................................................................................... 2

2. ARANGODB ─ ADVANTAGES ................................................................................................ 3

3. ARANGODB ─ BASIC CONCEPTS & TERMINOLOGIES ............................................................ 5

4. ARANGODB ─ SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ............................................................................... 6

How to Install ArangoDB? ....................................................................................................................... 6

5. ARANGOSH – COMMAND LINE .......................................................................................... 12

6. ARANGODB ─ WEB INTERFACE .......................................................................................... 13

7. ARANGODB ─ EXAMPLE CASE SCENARIOS ......................................................................... 15

The Knows_Graph ................................................................................................................................. 17

How to Add Multiple Endpoints ............................................................................................................ 19

The Social_Graph .................................................................................................................................. 21

8. ARANGODB ─ DATA MODELS & MODELLING ..................................................................... 22

9. ARANGODB ─ DATABASE METHODS .................................................................................. 23

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10. ARANGOSH ─ CRUD OPERATIONS...................................................................................... 26

How to Read Documents ....................................................................................................................... 28

How to Update Documents ................................................................................................................... 28

How to Remove Documents .................................................................................................................. 29

11. ARANGODB ─ CRUD OPERATIONS USING WEB INTERFACE................................................ 31

Creating a Collection ............................................................................................................................. 33

Filling Up the Newly Created Collection with Documents ...................................................................... 34

12. ARANGODB ─ QUERYING THE DATA WITH AQL ................................................................. 37

AQL Fundamentals ................................................................................................................................ 37

Complex Query in AQL .......................................................................................................................... 41

13. ARANGODB ─ AQL EXAMPLE QUERIES ............................................................................... 50

14. ARANGODB ─ HOW TO DEPLOY......................................................................................... 57

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 1. ArangoDB – A Multi-Model First DatabaseArangoDB

ArangoDB is hailed as a native multi-model database by its developers. This is unlike other
NoSQL databases. In this database, the data can be stored as documents, key/value pairs or
graphs. And with a single declarative query language, any or all of your data can be accessed.
Moreover, different models can be combined in a single query. And, owing to its multi-model
style, one can make lean applications, which will be scalable horizontally with any or all of the
three data models.

Layered vs. Native Multi-Model Databases

In this section, we will highlight a crucial difference between native and layered multi-model
databases.

Many database vendors call their product “multi-model,” but adding a graph layer to a
key/value or document store does not qualify as native multi-model.

With ArangoDB, the same core with the same query language, one can club together different
data models and features in a single query, as we have already stated in previous section. In
ArangoDB, there is no “switching” between data models, and there is no shifting of data from
A to B to execute queries. It leads to performance advantages to ArangoDB in comparison to
the “layered” approaches.

The Need for Multimodal Database

Interpreting the [Fowler’s] basic idea leads us to realize the benefits of using a variety of
appropriate data models for different parts of the persistence layer, the layer being part of
the larger software architecture.

According to this, one might, for example, use a relational database to persist structured,
tabular data; a document store for unstructured, object-like data; a key/value store for a
hash table; and a graph database for highly linked referential data.

However, traditional implementation of this approach will lead one to use multiple databases
in the same project. It can lead to some operational friction (more complicated deployment,
more frequent upgrades) as well as data consistency and duplication issues.

The next challenge after unifying the data for the three data models, is to devise and
implement a common query language that can allow data administrators to express a variety
of queries, such as document queries, key/value lookups, graphy queries, and arbitrary
combinations of these.

By graphy queries, we mean queries involving graph-theoretic considerations. In particular,

these may involve the particular connectivity features coming from the edges. For example,
ShortestPath, GraphTraversal, and Neighbors.

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Graphs are a perfect fit as data model for relations. In many real-world cases such as social
network, recommendor system, etc., a very natural data model is a graph. It captures
relations and can hold label information with each edge and with each vertex. Further, JSON
documents are a natural fit to store this type of vertex and edge data.

ArangoDB ─ Features
There are various notable features of ArangoDB. We will highlight the prominent features
below:

 Multi-model Paradigm
 ACID Properties
 HTTP API

ArangoDB supports all popular database models. Following are a few models supported by
ArangoDB:

 Document model
 Key/Value model
 Graph model

A single query language is enough to retrieve data out of the database.

The four properties Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability (ACID) describe the
guarantees of database transactions. ArangoDB supports ACID-compliant transactions.

ArangoDB allows clients, such as browsers, to interact with the database with HTTP API, the
API being resource-oriented and extendable with JavaScript.

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 2. ArangoDB ─ Advantages ArangoDB

Following are the advantages of using ArangoDB:

Consolidation
As a native multi-model database, ArangoDB eliminates the need to deploy multiple
databases, and thus decreases the number of components and their maintenance.
Consequently, it reduces the technology-stack complexity for the application. In addition to
consolidating your overall technical needs, this simplification leads to lower total cost of
ownership and increasing flexibility.

Simplified Performance Scaling

With applications growing over time, ArangoDB can tackle growing performance and storage
needs, by independently scaling with different data models. As ArangoDB can scale both
vertically and horizontally, so in case when your performance demands a decrease (a
deliberate, desired slow-down), your back-end system can be easily scaled down to save on
hardware as well as operational costs.

Reduced Operational Complexity

The decree of Polyglot Persistence is to employ the best tools for every job you undertake.
Certain tasks need a document database, while others may need a graph database. As a
result of working with single-model databases, it can lead to multiple operational challenges.
Integrating single-model databases is a difficult job in itself. But the biggest challenge is
building a large cohesive structure with data consistency and fault tolerance between
separate, unrelated database systems. It may prove nearly impossible.

Polyglot Persistence can be handled with a native multi-model database, as it allows to have
polyglot data easily, but at the same time with data consistency on a fault tolerant system.
With ArangoDB, we can use the correct data model for the complex job.

Strong Data Consistency

If one uses multiple single-model databases, data consistency can become an issue. These
databases aren’t designed to communicate with each other, therefore some form of
transaction functionality needs to be implemented to keep your data consistent between
different models.

Supporting ACID transactions, ArangoDB manages your different data models with a single
back-end, providing strong consistency on a single instance, and atomic operations when
operating in cluster mode.

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Fault Tolerance
It is a challenge to build fault tolerant systems with many unrelated components. This
challenge becomes more complex when working with clusters. Expertise is required to deploy
and maintain such systems, using different technologies and/or technology stacks. Moreover,
integrating multiple subsystems, designed to run independently, inflict large engineering and
operational costs.

As a consolidated technology stack, multi-model database presents an elegant solution.

Designed to enable modern, modular architectures with different data models, ArangoDB
works for cluster usage as well.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Each database technology requires ongoing maintenance, bug fixing patches, and other code
changes which are provided by the vendor. Embracing a multi-model database significantly
reduces the related maintenance costs simply by eliminating the number of database
technologies in designing an application.

Transactions
Providing transactional guarantees throughout multiple machines is a real challenge, and few
NoSQL databases give these guarantees. Being native multi-model, ArangoDB imposes
transactions to guarantee data consistency.

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 3. ArangoDB ─ Basic Concepts & Terminologies
ArangoDB

In this chapter, we will discuss the basic concepts and terminologies for ArangoDB. It is very
important to have a knowhow of the underlying basic terminologies related to the technical
topic we are dealing with.

The terminologies for ArangoDB are listed below:

 Document
 Collection
 Collection Identifier
 Collection Name
 Database
 Database Name
 Database Organization

From the perspective of data model, ArangoDB may be considered a document-oriented

database, as the notion of a document is the mathematical idea of the latter. Document-
oriented databases are one of the main categories of NoSQL databases.

The hierarchy goes like this: Documents are grouped into collections, and Collections exist
inside databases.

It should be obvious that Identifier and Name are two attributes for the collection and
database.

Usually, two documents (vertices) stored in document collections are linked by a document
(edge) stored in an edge collection. This is ArangoDB's graph data model. It follows the
mathematical concept of a directed, labeled graph, except that edges don't just have labels,
but are full-blown documents.

Having become familiar with the core terms for this database, we begin to understand
ArangoDB's graph data model. In this model, there exist two types of collections: document
collections and edge collections. Edge collections store documents and also include two special
attributes: first is the _from attribute, and the second is the _to attribute. These attributes
are used to create edges (relations) between documents essential for graph database.
Document collections are also called vertex collections in the context of graphs (see any graph
theory book).

Let us now see how important databases are. They are important because collections exist
inside databases. In one instance of ArangoDB, there can be one or many databases. Different
databases are usually used for multi-tenant setups, as the different sets of data inside them
(collections, documents, etc.) are isolated from one another. The default database _system

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is special, because it cannot be removed. Users are managed in this database, and their
credentials are valid for all the databases of a server instance.

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 4. ArangoDB ─ System Requirements ArangoDB

In this chapter, we will discuss the system requirements for ArangoDB.

The system requirements for ArangoDB are as follows:

 A VPS Server with Ubuntu Installation

 RAM: 1 GB; CPU : 2.2 GHz

For all the commands in this tutorial, we have used an instance of Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial) of
RAM 1GB with one cpu having a processing power 2.2 GHz. And all the arangosh commands
in this tutorial were tested for the ArangoDB version 3.1.27.

How to Install ArangoDB?

In this section, we will see how to install ArangoDB. ArangoDB comes pre-built for many
operating systems and distributions. For more details, please refer to the ArangoDB
documentation. As already mentioned, for this tutorial we will use Ubuntu 16.04x64.

The first step is to download the public key for its repositories:

# wget https://www.arangodb.com/repositories/arangodb31/
xUbuntu_16.04/Release.key

Output
--2017-09-03 12:13:24-- https://www.arangodb.com/reposit
ories/arangodb31/xUbuntu_16.04/Release.key Resolving www.arangodb.com
(www.arangodb.com)... 104.25.1 64.21, 104.25.165.21,
2400:cb00:2048:1::6819:a415, ... Connecting to www.arangodb.com
(www.arangodb.com)|104.25. 164.21|:443... connected. HTTP request sent,
awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 3924 (3.8K) [application/pgp-keys]
Saving to: ‘Release.key’
Release.key 100%[===================>] 3.83K -.-
KB/s in 0.001s
2017-09-03 12:13:25 (2.61 MB/s) - ‘Release.key’ saved [39 24/3924]

The important point is that you should see the Release.key saved at the end of the output.

Let us install the saved key using the following line of code:

# sudo apt-key add Release.key

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Output
OK

Run the following commands to add the apt repository and update the index:

# sudo apt-add-repository 'deb

https://www.arangodb.com/repositories/arangodb31/xUbuntu_16.04/ /'
# sudo apt-get update

As a final step, we can install ArangoDB:

# sudo apt-get install arangodb3

Output
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
grub-pc-bin
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
arangodb3
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 17 not upgraded.
Need to get 55.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 343 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Press Enter. Now the process of installing ArangoDB will start:

Get:1 https://www.arangodb.com/repositories/arangodb31/xUbuntu_16.04 arangodb3

3.1.27 [55.6 MB]
Fetched 55.6 MB in 59s (942 kB/s)
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously unselected package arangodb3.
(Reading database ... 54209 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../arangodb3_3.1.27_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking arangodb3 (3.1.27) ...

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Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu19) ...

Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Setting up arangodb3 (3.1.27) ...
Database files are up-to-date.

When the installation of ArangoDB is about to complete, the following screen appears:

Here, you will be asked to provide a password for the ArangoDB root user. Note it down
carefully.

Select the yes option when the following dialog box appears:

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When you click Yes as in the above dialog box, the following dialog box appears. Click Yes
here.

You can also check the status of ArangoDB with the following command:

# sudo systemctl status arangodb3

Output
arangodb3.service - LSB: arangodb
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/arangodb3; bad; vendor pre set: enabled)

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Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-09-04 05:42:35 UTC; 4min

46s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 2642 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/arangodb3 start (co de=exited,
status=0/SUC
Tasks: 22
Memory: 158.6M
CPU: 3.117s
CGroup: /system.slice/arangodb3.service
├─2689 /usr/sbin/arangod --uid arangodb
--gid arangodb --pid-file /va
└─2690 /usr/sbin/arangod --uid arangodb
--gid arangodb --pid-file /va
Sep 04 05:42:33 ubuntu-512 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: aran
godb...
Sep 04 05:42:33 ubuntu-512 arangodb3[2642]: * Starting
a rango database server a
Sep 04 05:42:35 ubuntu-512 arangodb3[2642]: {startup} sta rting
up in daemon mode
Sep 04 05:42:35 ubuntu-512 arangodb3[2642]: changed working
directory for child
Sep 04 05:42:35 ubuntu-512 arangodb3[2642]:
...done. Sep 04 05:42:35 ubuntu-512 systemd[1]: Started LSB:
arang odb.
Sep 04 05:46:59 ubuntu-512 systemd[1]: Started LSB: arang odb.
lines 1-19/19 (END)

ArangoDB is now ready to be used.

To invoke the arangosh terminal, type the following command in the terminal:

# arangosh

Output
Please specify a password:

Supply the root password created at the time of installation:

_
__ _ _ __ __ _ _ __ __ _ ___ | |
/ | '__/ _ | ’ \ / ` |/ _ / | ’
| (| | | | (| | | | | (| | () _ \ | | |
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_,|| _,|| ||_, |_/|/| ||

|__/

arangosh (ArangoDB 3.1.27 [linux] 64bit, using VPack 0.1.30, ICU 54.1, V8
5.0.71.39, OpenSSL 1.0.2g 1 Mar 2016)
Copyright (c) ArangoDB GmbH

Pretty printing values.

Connected to ArangoDB 'http+tcp://127.0.0.1:8529' version: 3.1.27 [server],
database: '_system', username: 'root'

Please note that a new minor version '3.2.2' is available

Type 'tutorial' for a tutorial or 'help' to see common examples
127.0.0.1:8529@_system> exit

To log out from ArangoDB, type the following command:

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