Immutable roles and privileges
Enterprise EditionNot available on Aura

Immutable privileges are useful for restricting the actions of users who can themselves administer privileges. Immutable roles are useful for providing system roles, which appear as permanent parts of the DBMS.

Immutable privileges and roles should only be used in situations where changes are rare. They are intentionally difficult to modify, so changes should be undertaken with caution (e.g., when the DBMS has been isolated by some other means and unauthorized access can be reliably prevented). Typically, this type of modification should only be made once during the commissioning phase of a DBMS.

Administer immutable roles and privileges

After the DBMS is safely isolated from external connections, follow these steps to administer immutable roles and privileges:

Change the config setting dbms.security.auth_enabled to false.
Restart the DBMS.
Create or remove immutable privileges and roles in the same way as regular privileges and roles but with the addition of the IMMUTABLE keyword. See Examples.
Change the config setting dbms.security.auth_enabled back to true.
Restart the DBMS.

Privileges and roles created in this way now appear as an immutable part of the DBMS. If you want to change or remove them, you must repeat the process of setting dbms.security.auth_enabled to false.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate how to use Cypher to manage immutable roles and privileges.

Restricting the actions of users who can manage privileges

To prevent all users (including those with PRIVILEGE MANAGEMENT privileges) from performing database management, attach an immutable privilege to the PUBLIC role. The PUBLIC role implicitly and irrevocably applies to all users.

Ensure that you have completed steps 1 and 2 from Administer immutable roles and privileges.
Run the following command to deny the IMMUTABLE DATABASE MANAGEMENT privilege to the PUBLIC role:
```
DENY IMMUTABLE DATABASE MANAGEMENT ON DBMS TO PUBLIC
```
Verify that the IMMUTABLE keyword has been added to the privilege:
```
SHOW PRIVILEGES WHERE IMMUTABLE
```
Table 1. Result

access action resource graph segment role immutable

"DENIED"

"database_management"

"database"

"*"

"database"

"PUBLIC"

true

Rows: 2

The result shows that all users are restricted from adding or removing privileges, including the admin user.
Ensure you have completed steps 4 and 5 from Administer immutable roles and privileges.

Table 1. Result
access	action	resource	graph	segment	role	immutable
`"DENIED"`	`"database_management"`	`"database"`	`"*"`	`"database"`	`"PUBLIC"`	`true`
Rows: 2

Creating permanent roles that cannot be changed

You can use immutable roles to create permanent built-in system roles that cannot be modified even by users who have ROLE MANAGEMENT privileges.

For example, you want to create an analyst role that cannot be dropped, renamed, or have any of its privileges changed (even by users with the ROLE MANAGEMENT and PRIVILEGE MANAGEMENT privileges).

Ensure that you have completed steps 1 and 2 from Administer immutable roles and privileges.
Create an immutable role to hold the immutable privileges:
```
CREATE IMMUTABLE ROLE analyst
```

Immutably grant the MATCH privilege:

GRANT IMMUTABLE MATCH {*} ON GRAPH * ELEMENTS * TO analyst

Ensure you have completed steps 4 and 5 from Administer immutable roles and privileges.

Now, even users with ROLE MANAGEMENT and PRIVILEGE MANAGEMENT privileges will not be able do any of the following:
Drop the analyst role
```
DROP ROLE analyst
```
Revoke the MATCH privilege from the analyst role
```
REVOKE MATCH {*} ON GRAPH * ELEMENTS * FROM analyst
```
Rename the analyst role
```
RENAME ROLE analyst TO dataReader
```

While the make-up (name, existence, associated privileges) of immutable roles is immutable, their assignment to users is not. This means that an immutable role can itself be granted to or revoked from a user by any user with ROLE MANAGEMENT privileges.

Only immutable privileges (e.g. GRANT IMMUTABLE MATCH {*} ON GRAPH * ELEMENTS * TO analyst in the example above) can be assigned to immutable roles. This is to make sure that an immutable role and all of its privileges is explicitly and completely immutable.

Glossary

allocator: A component in the cluster that allocates databases to servers according to the topology constraints specified and an allocation strategy.
asynchronous replication: Asynchronous replication is used by secondary copies to poll for new transactions, which means they cannot be guaranteed to have received the most recent transactions. This enables efficient scale-out of read-performance.
Aura instance: A fully-managed DBMS represented by a single instance ID, that is running in the Neo4j Aura cloud.
auto-commit transaction: An automatically committed transaction that contains a single query.
Bolt protocol: Bolt is a protocol used for interaction between Neo4j instances and drivers.
bookmark: A marker the client can request from the cluster to ensure that it is able to read its own writes so that the application’s state is consistent and only databases that have a copy of the bookmark are permitted to respond.
category (Bloom): A category is based on a node label and is defined in a Perspective as a way of visually distinguishing nodes with the same label(s).
causal consistency: All servers in a cluster agree on the order in which transactions take place. The position of a server on the causal chain can be guaranteed using a bookmark.
cluster: A Neo4j DBMS that spans multiple servers working together to increase fault tolerance and/or read scalability. Databases on a cluster may be configured to replicate across servers in the cluster thus achieving read scalability or high availability.
client application: Software that interacts with a Neo4j server.
commit: A commit is the successful completion of a transaction, which ensures durability of any changes made. For more details, visit Operations Manual → Transaction management.
composite database: Composite databases are the means to access partitioned graph data with a single Cypher query.
constraint: Constraints are sets of data modeling rules that ensure the data is consistent and reliable.
Cypher®: Neo4j’s graph query language.
data model: A data model defines how information is organized in a database. A good data model will make querying and understanding your data easier. In Neo4j, the data models have a graph structure.
database: A database is a container used by the DBMS to manage and store graph data. The physical structure of data is controlled by the database.
database vs graph: Databases are the physical containers of graph data. Graphs are the logical structure of data in Neo4j.
Database Management System: Database Management System, or DBMS, capable of managing multiple databases. A DBMS may run on a single server, or span several servers configured as a cluster.
database schema: The prescribed property existence and datatypes for nodes and relationships.
deallocate: An act of removing a database from a server or a server from a cluster without loss of data or reduced fault tolerance.
degree (of a node): The number of relationships of a specific node; loops are counted twice.
disaster recovery: A manual intervention to restore availability of a cluster, or databases within a cluster.
driver: A software library that provides access to Neo4j from a particular programming language.
election: In the event that the Raft leader becomes unresponsive, followers automatically trigger an election and vote for a new leader.
entity: A node or a relationship.
expression (Cypher): A component of a Cypher query which produces values. It may be used in projections, as a predicate, or when setting properties on graph elements.
fabric: Fabric is the architectural design of a unified system that provides a single access point to local or distributed graph data.
fault tolerance: A guarantee that a cluster can maintain a database’s persistence and availability in the event of one or more servers failing.
follower: A primary copy of a database acting as a follower, receives and acknowledges synchronous writes from the leader.
Generative AI (GenAI): A type of artificial intelligence (AI) system that generates text, images, or other media in response to prompts.
graph: A logical representation of a set of nodes where some pairs are connected by relationships.
index: Data structure that improves read performance of a database.
knowledge graph: A specific type of graph that has an organizing principle so that a user (or a computer system) can reason about the underlying data. The organizing principle provides an additional layer of structure that adds context to support knowledge discovery.
label: Marks a node as a member of a named and indexed subset. A node may be assigned zero or more labels.
leader: A single primary copy of a database is designated as the leader. It receives all write transactions from clients and replicates writes synchronously to followers and asynchronously to secondary copies of the database.
main database: In terms of Neo4j Enterprise Studio, the database(s) containing the user’s data. Can exist in the same Neo4j deployment as the tool asset database.
motif: A description of a specific pattern within a graph.
node: A node represents an entity or discrete object in your graph data model. Nodes can be connected by relationships, hold data in properties, and are classified by labels.
operator: A symbol representing a mathematical or logical operation.
parameter: Named value provided when running a Cypher statement.
path: A sequence of nodes and the relationships connecting them, that does not contain duplicate relationships. Several paths can match a pattern.
pattern: A specific arrangement of nodes and relationships that can be matched in a graph. A pattern follows a motif.
perspective (Bloom): A Perspective defines a certain business view or domain that can be found in the target Neo4j graph. A single Neo4j graph can be viewed through different Perspectives, each tailored for a different business purpose.
primary: A copy of the database that is able to process write transactions and is eligible to be elected as a leader. It participates in fault tolerant writes as it is part of the majority required to acknowledge and commit write transactions.
primary vs secondary: In a cluster, databases can operate in either primary or secondary mode. Primary databases are able to process write and read transactions, ensuring fault tolerance. Secondary databases are replicated asynchronously from primaries, and their main purpose is to provide read scaling within the cluster.
project (Aura): An isolated environment in the unified Aura console that contains its own database instances, configurations, and resources. Preceded by tenant in the classic Aura console.
property: Properties are key-value pairs that are used for storing data on nodes and relationships.
query (Cypher): A statement that retrieves or writes information to a database.
Raft group: A group of servers that are participating in hosting a particular database in primary mode.
Raft group member: A server that is participating in a Raft group. A server can be a member of one or more groups.
Raft log: A shared log between all Raft group members that is guaranteed to be consistently updated and viewed by those members. The log contains both database data and operational state of the Raft group.
Raft protocol: The networking mechanism that enables a database to replicate its data across multiple servers to give high availability for accessing the data and high durability to the data stored.
read scaling: Distributing query load by creating additional database copies hosted in secondary mode (read-only).
relationship: A relationship represents a connection between nodes in your graph data model. Relationships connect a source node to a target node, hold data in properties, and are classified by type.
secondary: An asynchronously replicated copy of the database that provides read scaling within the cluster.
seed: A seed is a database dump or a full backup used to create a database on a cluster. This is sometimes called seeding.
server: A physical machine, a virtual machine, or a container running an instance of Neo4j. Servers can be standalone or part of a cluster.
session: A causally linked sequence of transactions.
session consistency: An alternative name for Neo4j’s causal consistency.
standalone: A single server running Neo4j and not part of a cluster.
synchronous replication: Synchronous replication requires the leader primary to replicate a transaction and block the commit until a quorum of the follower primaries acknowledges that the transaction is successfully replicated. Once the transaction is replicated, the commit is allowed to proceed. This ensures data durability and consistency within the cluster.
system database: A database used by Neo4j to store system information.
tenant (Aura): An isolated environment in the classic Aura console that contains its own database instances, configurations, and resources. Replaced by project in the unified Aura console.
tool asset database: In terms of Neo4j Enterprise Studio, the database where tools' assets are stored. This can be in the same Neo4j deployment as the main database(s) or in a separate deployment.
topology: A configuration that describes how the copies of a database should be spread across the servers in a cluster, see primary mode and secondary mode.
transaction: A transaction comprises a unit of work performed against a database. It is treated in a coherent and reliable way, independent of other transactions. Transactions comply with the ACID consistency model (atomic, consistent, isolated, and durable).

Immutable roles and privilegesEnterprise EditionNot available on Aura