Wait, GraphRAG Doesn't Work the Way I Thought It Did

Welcome to the JUG Oberpfalz Online Live Coding Sessions!
Our online sessions are held in English and streamed live on YouTube. The recording will be available afterwards. Join the live chat, ask questions, and follow along as we explore what the next generation of software development might look like.
This session is hosted by Johannes Rabauer.
**Session Topic**
"GraphRAG" gets used as if it were one technique, but it's really several different retrieval strategies wearing the same name, and most explanations of it never actually show what separates them.
This session works through that gap directly, using GraphRAG Lens, a Java app built specifically to make the difference visible: the same question answered four separate ways (Local Search, Global Search, DRIFT, and a plain vector baseline), each one replayed step by step so the mechanism is something you watch, not something you take on faith.
The second half turns from watching to building. The app's own core logic claims to be a reusable Java library, cleanly separated from the rest of the app. That claim gets tested live, by building a small second project against it, in front of everyone, with no guarantee it goes cleanly.
**What we'll do**
* Walk through what actually distinguishes Local, Global, and DRIFT search from a plain vector-RAG baseline
* Run the same question through all four modes and replay each Retrieval Trace step by step
* Look at how Neo4j's community detection groups entities into higher-level summaries for Global Search
* Inspect the app's hexagonal architecture and its enforcer-gated core module boundary
* Build a small second Java project that depends on the app's core logic as a real library, live
* Answer questions from the community
**Topics**
* GraphRAG
* Retrieval-Augmented Generation
* Neo4j
* LangChain4j
* Java
* Knowledge Graphs
* Vector Search
* Hexagonal Architecture
* Spring Boot
Whether you're a Java developer, someone building RAG pipelines, or just curious what actually makes GraphRAG different from regular RAG, you're welcome to join.
See you in the live chat!