Release Date: 1 January 1970

Aura 27 February 2024 (Neo4j 5.17)

Highlights

Surface for Developers and Data Scientists

  • String normalization function (NORMALIZE) and predicate expression (IS [NOT] NORMALIZED), making it possible to generate a canonical form of a Unicode string and determine if two Unicode strings are equivalent to each other.

Language and Graph Model 

  • Indexes and constraints: On attempting to create an index or constraint (CREATE INDEX|CONSTRAINT… IF NOT EXISTS), we now return a notification if the index/constraint to be created already exists.  Similarly, on attempting to drop an index or constraint (DROP INDEX|CONSTRAINT… IF EXISTS), we now return a notification if the index/constraint to be dropped does not exist. Documentation is available here and here.
  • Neo4j GenAI Integrations – available only in Aura – compatible with various generative AI services, including support for transforming text data into vector embeddings using VertexAI, OpenAI, or Amazon Bedrock. The resulting vector embeddings can be used together with Neo4j’s vector search indexes.  Documentation is available here

Platform & Supportability

  • Block format: Building upon Neo4j’s decades of experience with graph data, Block format lays out the data on disk in a structure that greatly increases page cache efficiency and prevents data fragmentation. Block Format is now the default storage format for new databases created on Aura Pro. See blog post.

Fixes

  • Cypher
    • Fix a bug where a query using a conjunction such as CREATE (:A&B) would create a node without labels.
    • Fix a bug that would return a ‘WGS84 invalid coordinate error’ in a POINT INDEX distance calculation.  This bug would occur for large search distances (> 11,936,226 m) where the search region perimeter crosses both poles (90,0 and -90,0).
    • Fix issue with EXPLAIN and nested temporal types leading to a failed to pretty print RuntimeConstant error.
  • Kernel
    • In FULL mode, when updating a node that was also part of either a new or deleted relationship change, the BEFORE state for that entity did not contain all the node’s properties – only the logical key properties.
  • Change Data Capture
    • Move the CDC procedures (cdc.earliest, cdc.current and cdc.current) into the database namespace (db.cdc.earliest, db.cdc.current and db.cdc.current). Documentation is available here.
  Please refer to the changelog for full details of the changes.