A slight change from the previous post's .cypher MATCH and CREATE

From the previous post, I wrote a series of Cypher commands that would match musicians with albums and create a relationship between them. Here's one such command:

MATCH (M:Musician {name:"Miles Davis"}), (M:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"}) 
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Trumpet"}]->(A);

I learned that I could also do

MERGE (M:Musician {name: "Miles Davis"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name: "In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument: "Trumpet"}]->(A);

The second form would create a :Musician node with the provided name if it didn't exist already, or return the existing node. In either case, it would MERGE the bound :Musician node with the :Album node. It felt faster than the first form, although I don't have any benchmarks. Maybe some time.

It might still be necessary to CREATE the :Album node first though. I tried it — on another album I hadn't created yet and cypher-shell gave me back 0 nodes, 0 relationships. I may try this again to double-check.

As you can tell, I'm still learning Cypher.

In any event, below is the rewritten cypher code to associate the musicians with the :Album In a Silent Way:

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Miles Davis"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Trumpet"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Wayne Shorter"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Soprano Sax"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"John McLaughlin"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Electric Guitar"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Chick Corea"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Electric Piano"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Herbie Hancock"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Electric Piano"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Joe Zawinul"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Organ"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Dave Holland"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Double Bass"}]->(A);

MERGE (M:Musician {name:"Tony Williams"})
WITH M MATCH (A:Album {name:"In a Silent Way"})
MERGE (M)-[:PLAYED_ON {instrument:"Drums"}]->(A);

I can choose not to CREATE the :MUSICIAN nodes with the names above — the first MERGE will create those that don't exist.

Here's the resulting graph:

I've also decided to create a separate .cypher for each of the next :Album nodes, although I'm keeping the ones already in my existing .cypher. Stay tuned.