> while most of the queries could also be translated to relational SQL, Cypher's linear construction using WITH clauses is far, far easier to reason about, IMO.
Didn't look too deeply, but one of the keys with Cypher (at least in the context of graph databases) is that it has a nice way of representing `JOIN` operations as graph traversals.
MATCH (p:Person)-[r]-(c:Company) RETURN p.Name, c.Name
Where `r` can represent any relationship (AKA `JOIN`) between the two collections `Person` and `Company` such as `WORKS_AT`, `EMPLOYED_BY`, `CONTRACTOR_FOR`, etc.
So I'd say that linear queries are one of the things I like about Cypher, but the clean abstraction of complex `JOIN` operations is another huge one.
> […] Where `r` can represent any relationship […]
… and «-[r]-» can represent any relationship direction, which obviates the need for constructing separate queries for inverse traversing relationships. Kinda like running a compiler forward and backward.
https://prql-lang.org/