Amazon Neptune is a managed

graph database A graph database (GDB) is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the '' graph'' (or ''edge'' or ''relationship''). The graph rel ...

product published by

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...

. It is used as a web service and is part of

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide d ...

(AWS). It was announced on November 29, 2017. Amazon Neptune supports popular graph models property graph and

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

's RDF, and their respective

query language Query languages, data query languages or database query languages (DQL) are computer languages used to make queries in databases and information systems. A well known example is the Structured Query Language (SQL). Types Broadly, query language ...

s Apache TinkerPop's

Gremlin A gremlin is a mischievous folkloric creature invented at the beginning of the 20th century to originally explain malfunctions in aircraft and later in other machinery and processes and their operators. Depictions of these creatures vary widel ...

, openCypher, and

SPARQL SPARQL (pronounced " sparkle" , a recursive acronym for SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) is an RDF query language—that is, a semantic query language for databases—able to retrieve and manipulate data stored in Resource Description ...

, including other

products. Amazon Neptune general availability (GA) was announced on May 30, 2018 and is currently available in 22 regions. Neptune is

HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, 1 ...

eligible. On December 12, 2018, it was announced that Amazon Neptune was in-scope for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and

ISO ISO is the most common abbreviation for the International Organization for Standardization. ISO or Iso may also refer to: Business and finance * Iso (supermarket), a chain of Danish supermarkets incorporated into the SuperBest chain in 2007 * Iso ...

compliance programs.

History

Amazon Neptune is based on Blazegraph. Amazon acquired the Blazegraph developers and the Blazegraph open source development was essentially stopped in April 2018.

Features

External support

Amazon Neptune supports the open source Apache TinkerPop

graph traversal language, openCypher query language for property graphs, and the

standard Resource Description Framework's (RDF)

. All three can be used on the same Neptune instance, and allows the user to build queries to navigate highly connected

data set A data set (or dataset) is a collection of data. In the case of tabular data, a data set corresponds to one or more database tables, where every column of a table represents a particular variable, and each row corresponds to a given record of the ...

s and provides high performance for both graph models. Neptune also uses other AWS product features such as those of

Amazon S3 Amazon S3 or Amazon Simple Storage Service is a service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides object storage through a web service interface. Amazon S3 uses the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its ...

Amazon EC2 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

and

Amazon CloudWatch Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

Security

All Amazon Neptune database clusters are created and stored in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), which allows the user to isolate their database in their own

private network In Internet networking, a private network is a computer network that uses a private address space of IP addresses. These addresses are commonly used for local area networks (LANs) in residential, office, and enterprise environments. Both the IP ...

. Using Neptune's VPC configuration, the user can configure

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spr ...

settings to their needs in order to control network access to database instances. Amazon Neptune is integrated with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which allows the user to create AWS IAM groups and control the actions that the groups and other AWS IAM users can do. Neptune allows the user to

encrypt In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...

databases using keys created through AWS Key Management Service (KMS). A database instance running with Neptune Encryption, encrypts all of the stored data, backups,

snapshots Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...

and replicas in the same cluster. Amazon Neptune allows the user to use

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protocol is enc ...

to encrypt data during its transfer to and from clients or Neptune service endpoints using

Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...

(TLS).

Storage

The data is stored in a cluster volume, a virtual volume utilizing SSD drives. These sizes of these volumes are dynamic, they increase depending how much data is stored in the database, with a maximum of 64 TB. The Amazon Neptune SLA policy is designed to offer a monthly uptime percentage greater that of 99.9%, increasing database performance and availability by integrating the engine with a virtual storage based on SSD drives, that are specially made for database workloads. Neptune maintains copies of the user's data in multiple Availability Zones. In case of failures, Neptune automatically detects any failed segments in a disk volume and repairs them.

Availability

Neptune is now generally available in the US East ( N. Virginia), US East (

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

US West US West, Inc. (stylized as US WEST) was one of seven Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs, also referred to as "Baby Bells"), created in 1983 under the Modification of Final Judgement (''United States v. Western Electric Co., Inc.'' 552 ...

(

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

), US West (N. California),

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

(Central), AWS GovCloud (US-West), AWS GovCloud (US-East),

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

(

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

(

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

(

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

( Stockholm),

(

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

), South America (São Paulo),

Asia Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pacific Isla ...

(

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

( Sydney),

(

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

(

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

(

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), China (

Ningxia Ningxia (,; , ; alternately romanized as Ninghsia), officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (NHAR), is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1 ...

), China (Beijing), Operated by NWCD, and

Middle-East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...

(

Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an ...

) AWS regions.

Pricing

Pricing is determined by AWS regions, with each region having different prices for the available services. On-Demand Instance Pricing lets the user pay only for what instance they use by the hour instead of a fixed sum. The price also differs depending on the instance class. Similarly, the user only pays for the storage consumed by the database, with no payments in advance. The price is based on the storage rate and I/O rate, which are billed in GB per month and per million request increments respectively. This pricing model is beneficial to short-term and small-scale projects and is available in all AWS regions. The price for backup storage is also billed in per GB-month increments albeit at different rates. Data Transfer is priced in per GB increments, the amount depends on whether the data is transferred in or out of Amazon Neptune and how much data is transferred per month (TB per Month).

Application

On September 12, 2018, it was announced that Neptune achieved

eligibility enabling it to process data sets containing protected health information (

PHI Phi (; uppercase Φ, lowercase φ or ϕ; grc, ϕεῖ ''pheî'' ; Modern Greek: ''fi'' ) is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Archaic and Classical Greek (c. 9th century BC to 4th century BC), it represented an aspirated voicele ...

). On December 12, 2018, it was announced that Amazon Neptune was in-scope for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard,

ISO 9001 The ISO 9000 family is a set of five quality management systems (QMS) standards that help organizations ensure they meet customer and other stakeholder needs within statutory and regulatory requirements related to a product or service. ISO ...

, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 compliance programs. The user can use Amazon Neptune in applications that are subject to PCI compliance or require

certification. On May 17, 2019, it was announced that Neptune achieved

SSAE 16 Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements no. 16 (SSAE 16) is an auditing standard for service organizations, produced by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Auditing Standards Board, which supersedes Statem ...

eligibility Neptune powers graph use cases such as recommendation engines,

fraud detection In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compensa ...

knowledge graph The Google Knowledge Graph is a knowledge base from which Google serves relevant information in an infobox beside its search results. This allows the user to see the answer in a glance. The data is generated automatically from a variety of sou ...

s, drug discovery,

network security Network security consists of the policies, processes and practices adopted to prevent, detect and monitor unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of a computer network and network-accessible resources. Network security involves th ...

, and social networking.

Notable users

Some notable customers of Amazon Neptune include,

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, a ...

Pearson Pearson may refer to: Organizations Education *Lester B. Pearson College, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada *Pearson College (UK), London, owned by Pearson PLC *Lester B. Pearson High School (disambiguation) Companies *Pearson PLC, a UK-based int ...

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application ...

, Siemens,

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...

FINRA The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associat ...

, LifeOmic, Blackfynn, and

Amazon Alexa Amazon Alexa, also known simply as Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology largely based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. It was first used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Echo Dot, Echo Studio ...

References

External links

Amazon Neptune official home page
{{Cloud computing Neptune Cloud databases Distributed data stores Structured storage NoSQL products Computer-related introductions in 2017 Graph databases