7.1.2. Terminology

This section lists the relevant terminology related to authentication and authorization in Neo4j.

The following terms are relevant to role-based access control within Neo4j:

active user
A user who is active within the system and can perform actions prescribed by any assigned roles on the data. This is in contrast to a suspended user.
administrator
This is a user who has been assigned the admin role.
current user
This is the currently logged-in user invoking the commands described in this chapter.
password policy

The password policy is a set of rules of what makes up a valid password. For Neo4j, the following rules apply:

  • The password cannot be the empty string.
  • When changing passwords, the new password cannot be the same as the previous password.
role

This is a collection of actions — such as read and write — permitted on the data. There are two types of roles in Neo4j:

suspended user
A user who has been suspended is not able to access the database in any capacity, regardless of any assigned roles.
user
  • A user is composed of a username and credentials, where the latter is a unit of information, such as a password, verifying the identity of a user.
  • A user may represent a human, an application etc.