The Internet of (Connected) Things - by Grace Andrews and Huston Hedinger

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The Internet of (Connected) Things
        by Grace Andrews and Huston Hedinger

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Introduction
The Internet of Things presents an incredible number of new
opportunities for growth in the coming years. From infrastructures to
software, the development of the IoT means an inevitable shift in the
way humans interact with their devices and their surroundings. Along
with these new opportunities however, the IoT also presents new
obstacles for both companies and technologies to be able to quickly
and efficiently adapt to their changing surroundings.

IoT data is inherently connected. Devices are connected to each other,
applications, and users. Users are connected on social media and in
physical localities. Thus many IoT use cases are tied together by
geographically aware and relevant content and interactions. Managing
this connected data will present a major challenge for firms using 20th
century technology.

For this and other reasons, more and more firms are turning to graph
databases to store their data.1 These databases allow teams to store
data in a way that naturally mirrors the real world, something future
applications will inevitibly parallel. Teams that have adopted Neo4j,
the worlds leading graph database, are seeing not only increases in
application performance and possibilities, they are also finding that
Neo4j reduces the traditional workload of engineers.

1Gelbmann, Matthias. “Graph DBMSs are gaining in popularity faster than any other database category.” DB-
Engines. 21 January 2014. Retrieved from http://db-engines.com/en/blog_post/26.

Background
As devices become more and more connected, The Internet of
Things is not only changing the way that devices communicate, but
also changing the way that people interact.

                                    1901: Telegraph Networks

                            Fig 1 - Eastern Telegraph Company System Map

Since it allows individuals to better connect with the world around
them, the Internet of Things is best characterized as the “Internet of
People and Things.” In reality, the IoT is just the current iteration in a
long history of technological advancement and progress in electronic
communication. From the electromagnetic telegraph to the birth of the
internet,2 the IoT is the latest milestone in an incredibly fast movement
towards greater and greater connectedness (Fig. 1, 2, 3).

2   Postcapes. ‘History of the Internet of Things.’ http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-history

1971: Birth of the Internet

                                            Fig 2 - Arpanet

One of the greatest contributors to the development of IoT was Mark
Weiser. In his article “The Computer for the 21st Century,” written for
Scientific American in 1991, he states that “The most profound
technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the
fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”3
Weiser presents a world where “ubiquitous computing” isn’t about
taking traditional devices into non-traditional environments, but
instead seamlessly integrating them into our every day lives.4
Furthermore, he recognizes that these machines must not only be a
part of us, they must also communicate with each other and be able to
identify spatial relationships with entire ecosystems of devices. 5 goal is
for technology to literally “disappear into the background,” while still
enhancing our lives.

3 Weiser, Mark. “The Computer for the 21st Century.” Scientific American. September, 1991. Retrieved from
http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html.
4   Ibid.
5   Ibid.

2010: One Billion People Connected

                       Fig 3 - Facebook friendships, December 2010

    Friedemann Mattern and Christian Floerkemeier articulate the vision
    for IoT as one where “the Internet extends into the real world,
    embracing everyday objects. Physical items are no longer
    disconnected from the virtual world, but can be controlled remotely
    and can act as physical access points to Internet services.”6 The
    concept of IoT is further supported by the decreasing cost and growing
    access that enterprises and individuals are enjoying due to high tech
    devices. Individuals and enterprises are using tools today that would
    have been beyond the imagination of all but a handful of futurists ten
    years ago.

6Floerkemeier, Christian and Mattern, Friedemann .“From the Internet of Computers to the Internet of Things.”
Distributed Systems Group, Institute for Pervasive Computing, ETH Zurich. 2010. Retrieved from http://
www.vs.inf.ethz.ch/publ/papers/Internet-of-things.pdf.

Graph of Things

It is not outlandish to imagine a very near future where your alarm clock
syncs with a biometric device that you wear on your wrist like a watch.
Your device not only monitors your breathing, but also uses the patterns
it identifies in your breathing to identify the best time to wake you up.
From there, your home slowly turns on the lights and opens your blinds
to simulate the sun rising and your natural sleep pattern, and then starts
your shower for convenience. While you’re in the bathroom, your closet
selects an outfit that is weather appropriate based on the latest
forecasts, and is event appropriate based on events you’re attending
that day in your calendar. The system steams your clothes and starts
your coffee machine, without you lifting a finger. When it’s time to go,
your car starts as you slip out the door and the home security system
shuts down your appliances, turns of your lights and locks the door. This
isn’t a scene from the latest sci-fi trilogy – it’s technology that could be
available in the very near future. Companies are already applying IoT
technology to manufacturing, transportation, utilities, home electronics,
wearables, health, and countless other sectors.

Even with this future already at our doorstep, most manufacturers,
network operators, and software companies are ill-equipped to deal
with the complexities of a connected world. Per Tim O’Reilly, “…the
‘Internet of Things and Humans’ [means that the] ability for things and
humans to cooperate gets more nuanced when the things become
smarter.”

In dealing with an entirely interconnected world, management and
deployment of applications that can keep up with this ever-changing
interface is incredibly challenging. The best hope for businesses that
plan to utilize the IoT to create value is to find data stores that natively
embrace the inherent connectedness of the underlying data.

Enter Neo4j.

       2014 - Transactional Data storage as a graph

                Fig 4 - Data modeling with GraphJSON.io

Neo4j, the world’s leading Graph Database, takes into account
connectedness by making relationships first class actors in the data.
Instead of using rigid data structures, Neo4j models nodes and the
relationships between them.

One of Neo4j’s unique capabilities is the ability to store properties as
part of nodes or relationships, allowing for a flexible and extensible
data model. Additionally, Neo4j allows you to traverse the data based
on the relationships and their properties—vital in a world where
everything is connected. Neo4j’s graph traversals take place with
predictable query performance and traversing data in Neo4j can often
be 10,000 times faster7 than similar queries in a relational database. In
many cases, Neo4j can complete queries that are impossible in a
relational database.

                                      2014 - Neo4j’s Browser

                              Fig 5 - The Neo4j Graph Database Browser
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7   Partner, Jonas. “Neo4j in Action”. pg. 9. 2013

In Fig. 5, you can see Neo4j’s sleek and intuitive admin interface—the
browser. From a simple query, the Neo4j browser returns data and
visualizations that easily articulate patterns of information in the data.
In order to convey the value of Neo4j for storing and transacting on IoT
data, we built a demo IoT data set We encourage you to take a look at
the data your self by visiting the Github repository.

The data comes with sample queries that ask the following:

- “All friends and friends of friends of users that attended an event.”
- “Individuals with a device that runs Android 4.1 or higher.”
- “Individuals with a device that has Android 4.1 or higher, and who have a
Fitbit product.”
- “Return all users with Google Glass and Fitbit (early adopters) in Portland.”

The sample queries serve as strong examples of what can be done with a
relatively simple IoT data set that would be incredibly challenging to
model, manage, and query in any other database.

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     About Us
Huston Hedinger and Grace Andrews are cofounders at GraphAlchemist
and have led the company since 2012. GraphAlchemist is a Portland, OR
based firm that provides data science and data visualization as a service.
GraphAlchemist helps customers formulate and answer questions from
their data in order to create significant business value through full stack
cloud and web solutions that use cutting edge web, data base, and data
visualization technologies. They count several Fortune 500s and high
growth startups as customers.
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Neo4j is the world’s leading graph data base. With the motto “Graphs for
Everyone,” Neo4j is allowing people everywhere to make use of graph
data in every industry; connecting data to make sense of everything.

Neo4j includes leaders across every industry: