Highlights

Surface for Developers and Data Scientists

• Browser 5.0 is a tool for developers to interact with the graph, and includes the following new features
  • Zoom to cursor on scroll in visualization
  • Zoom graph to fit after initial visualization animation
  • Editor displays full database name
  • Clear credentials in connection form on disconnect
    • Update :help articles on INDEX & CONSTRAINT
    • Note The Version and Info report the version as 5.0.0 but the Jar is named neo4j-browser-4.4.7.jar
• All drivers:
  • Exceptions and Errors provide an interface which indicates whether a retry behaviour is recommended for the exception.
• Python driver
  • asyncio support has been added to the Python Driver, including cancellation.
  • Support for Pandas dataframes export Neo4j result sets to integrate into common workflows for data scientists.
  • Support for type hints enabling type checking for your development. 
• Go driver
  • Query String and Parameters in the results objects have been renamed, replacing the inconsistent ‘Statement’ object with the consistent ‘Query’ object.
• Notifications -Updates severity on some of the existing notifications. Also, updates status code accordingly (removing Warning from the name if it now has severity Information).y 
• REMOVAL of the deprecated Session#reset in the Java driver.
• REMOVAL of deprecated HTTP API endpoints where the endpoint begins with /db/data/transaction/. Please use the endpoints that include the database name (e.g. /db/neo4j/tx/commit.

Language and Graph Model

• Graph Pattern Matching has been improved:
  • New inline Relationship patterns: MATCH (a)-[r:R WHERE r.p >10]-(b)
  • Improved label expressions in MATCH clauses. Nodes and relationships can be filtered using more sophisticated label and type boolean expressions such as & for logical AND (V:L1&L2), | for logical OR (V:L1|L2), ! for negation (V:!L4), % for any (V:%) and () for grouping (V:(L1&L2)|(L3& !L4)).
  • Allow reference to variables in other path elements:
    • MATCH (a)-[r:R WHERE r.p > b.p + a.p]-(b)
    • MATCH (a WHERE b.prop > 100)-[r]-(b)

• Additions to Cypher
  • Allow underscores in numeric literals, except at the start.
  • COUNT { .. } expression replaces size().
  • EXISTS {} can be used in all expressions.
  • isNan function returns whether a value is or is not a number.
• Neo4j 5 APOC 5 Library is the most-widely used extension library for Neo4j. It includes procedures, providing functionality for utilities, conversions, graph updates, and more. Comes with Engineering support for security and severity 1 fixes. 
• REMOVAL of the deprecated BTREE index type.- please drop and recreate your indexes using TEXT, RANGE or POINT.
• REMOVAL of the deprecated CYPHER 3.5 mode
• Cypher Deprecations, additions & removals: full details are available here.

Read and Export Performance 

• RANGE and POINT indexes can be used to speed up MATCH queries.
• Lists included in FULLTEXT indexes - strings and arrays of strings are included in Full Text Indexes.
• Faster K-Hop Queries a new Cypher runtime operator (BSFPruningVarExpand) speeds up K-Hop queries.
• Auto-parameterize partially parameterized queries to improve query performance.

Write and Import Performance

• PIPELINED Runtime support for write operations subqueries (CALL { })  that perform write operations can now be run on the faster PIPELINED runtime.
• No Eager for DETACH DELETE (n) in CALL IN TRANSACTIONS - the planner performs memory efficient deletes for full database deletions by avoiding planning eager operations.

Please refer to the changelog for full details of the changes.

Documentation

The documentation is available here:

• Operations Manual
• Cypher Manual