[dperfect]

That makes sense. I'm seeing index-free adjacency mentioned in some other comparisons. Sounds pretty cool.

So if each node has pointers directly to related nodes (without needing an index lookup), does that also mean that inserts and updates are slower? From what I understand, if you're bypassing the need for an index lookup at query time, you have to pay for that at some other point in time - specifically by looking up the appropriate pointers at the time of insert/update. Is that accurate?

[jonpaine]

That's right. However, there are still indexes, even if they aren't necessary for traversal. Ideally you'll use an index to find a start node and traverse on from there (or in the case of your question, update from there).