Release Notes: Neo4j 2025.03

Release Date: 27 March 2025

Release Note for Neo4j 2025.03.0 (27 March 2025)

Neo4j Server

Kernel

• dbms.components() will return ‘5.27.0’ in the column versions. This is to support existing client applications that rely on the previous version format.

Neo4j-admin import

• Neo4j-admin incremental import adds support for updating and deleting existing data. This means that all data operations are now supported, including:
  • Creating and deleting Nodes/Relationships
  • Creating, updating and deleting Properties
  • Adding, updating and removing Labels and Types

Neo4j-admin import is the fastest way to apply changes to a graph database. A properly formatted list of changes can be applied in bulk as an offline operation far faster than they could via Cypher transactions. Documentation is available here.

Configuration settings

• Additional configuration settings  for cloud object store integrations:
  • AWS – configure the target throughput for transfer requests.
    • dbms.integrations.cloud_storage.s3.target_throughput_gbps
  • Azure – configure custom storage and host authority endpoints, allow non-public and/or private cloud Azure deployments. 
    • dbms.integrations.cloud_storage.azb.blob_endpoint_suffix dbms.integrations.cloud_storage.azb.authority_endpoint
  • GCP – Configure the Project ID of the Google storage bucket(s) to connect to.
    • dbms.integrations.cloud_storage.gs.project_id 

Documentation is available here.

Metrics

• Update server.metrics.filter default value to include the ‘Database data count metrics’ (*neo4j.count*) that have replaced the deprecated *ids_in_use* metrics. Documentation is available here.

 

Security

TLS / SSL configuration can now be updated at run-time.  This feature allows for TLS certificate rotation without the need for a database system restart.  A new setting, dbms.security.tls_reload_enabled, must be set to true to enable this capability.     Documentation is available here.

Surface for Developers and Data Scientists

• When dbms.cypher.lenient_create_relationship is set to true, MERGE clauses will not fail with Neo.TransientError.Transaction.Outdated. 
• Includes a new error handling mode for CALL IN TRANSACTIONS: ON ERROR RETRY. Documentation is available here.

Fixes

• Server
  • Fixes a bug with relationship traversal cursor pooling that could cause an ExpandInto operator to generate an incorrect relationship match in certain rare queries when executing on a block format database This option applies an exponential delay between retries for transaction batches failing due to transient errors, with an optional maximum retry duration, and handles failures based on a specified fallback error mode if the transaction does not succeed within the given time. 
  • Ensure global extensions start earlier to prevent incorrect CDC initialization. 
  • Return non zero exit code when aggregate backup command fails.
  • Fixes a memory leak when starting and stopping databases with unified caches enabled.
  • Fixes a problem where the experimental feature –parallel-recovery for backup and aggregate could fail on trying to apply schema changes out of order with index updates.

• Cypher
  • Fixes an issue where X1 page does not exist for node -1 errors appearing after node deletion. 
  • Fixes an issue where …DELETE n RETURN n could fail in some scenarios. 
  • Fixes an issue where we returned true instead of the actual property value for some specific WHERE clauses. 
  • Fixes an issue where serialization of an empty list inside another list would cause an index out of bounds exception. 
  • Fixes a bug with Dynamic Relationship Types where the first type would be inadvertently cached and reused for all rows 

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

Deprecations

• For all server changes and deprecations, see Operations Manual -> Changes, deprecations, and removals in Neo4j 2025.x
• For all Cypher language changes, deprecations, and compatibility, see Cypher Manual -> Deprecations, additions, and compatibility.

Bundled products

The following products have been included in the distribution – available in /products directory unless stated otherwise – and are fully compatible with this release. 

• APOC Core 2025.03.0 – The most popular community library developed for the database, is fully supported (included in Labs directory).
• Bloom 6.x-2.19.0 – A beautiful and expressive data visualization tool to quickly explore and interact with Neo4j’s graph data platform – no coding required. Please refer to the release notes for details.  (Requires a License)
• Browser 2025.03.0  – Neo4j Browser is a tool for developers to interact with the graph. It is the default interface for both Enterprise and Community Editions (included in the /libs directory) of the Neo4j database. 
• Neo4j GenAI Plugin 2025.03.0 -The GenAI plugin delivers integrations 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.
• Neo4j Graph Data Science 2.16.0 is a compatible version of the connected data analytics and machine learning platform that helps you understand the connections in big data to answer critical questions and improve predictions. Please refer to the release notes for further details. (GDS Enterprise requires a License. )
• Neo4j Ops Manager 1.12.1 is a UI-based tool that enables Administrators to operate and observe all of their Neo4j Database Management Servers. Now includes support for Neo4j’s any-to-any upgrade. Please refer to the release notes for details. (Included in Enterprise).