Neo4j: Cypher WHERE Clause vs. Curly Braces in MATCH Clause - Which is Better?

Question

I'm new to Neo4J, and have been learning Cypher query language the past few days.

I realized I can write my query like this...

MATCH (b:Beverage)<-[:likes]-(p:Person)-[:likes]->(r:Restaurant) 
WHERE b.name = 'Beer' and r.name = 'KFC'
RETURN p.name

... or like this...

MATCH (b:Beverage{name:'Beer'})<-[:likes]-(p:Person)-[:likes]->(r:Restaurant{name:'KFC'}) 
RETURN p.name

Which approach is better in terms of performance? And why?

Thank you.

Answer 1

I'm sorry to say, but @a-rodin's reply is wrong here: both of your statements result in the very same query plan. You can verify that by prefixing the statement with EXPLAIN and comparing the query plans.

For readability I'd structure the query in question:

MATCH (p:Person)-[:likes]->(b:Beverage{name:'Beer'}),
      (p)-[:likes]->(r:Restaurant{name:'KFC'}) 
RETURN p.name

Here the query reads like a sentence in plain English "match a person that likes beer and and like KFC restaurants".