Release Notes: Neo4j 2025-04

Release Date: 30 April 2025

Release Note for Neo4j 2025.04 (30 April 2025)

 

Neo4j Server

Kernel

• Updated dbms.components() procedure to return the calendar version of Neo4j, please ensure all your libraries are up to date. See Upgrade and Migration guide.
• Updated CDC change event IDs so they work with a database recovered using dbms.recreateDatabase().
• Added db.cdc.translateId() procedure to modify a change event ID to point to a renamed database. See documentation.
• Updated DatabaseManagementService in the Java API to be AutoCloseable.

Neo4j-admin 

• Updated neo4j-admin server license command to report the status of a trial license. See Operations Manual.
• Added –temp-path to neo4j-admin import for specifying a directory in which temporary files during import will be stored. See Operations Manual.
• Added –max-off-heap-memory option to neo4j-admin database migrate command for better control of the amount of memory the process is allowed to allocate. The –pagecache option is still supported, but deprecated. See Operations Manual.
• Added –prefer-diff-as-parent to the neo4j-admin database backup command. When performing a differential backup, prefer the latest non-empty differential backup as the parent instead of the latest backup. See Operations Manual.
• Database upload http requests have changed to ensure compatibility with the new Aura console.

Metrics

• Added transaction.lowest_available_committed_tx_id metric for tracking lowest available transaction ID present in the transaction logs.See Operations Manual.

Surface for Developers and Data Scientists

• Introduce –error-format argument to Cypher Shell to control how errors are displayed. See Operations Manual.
• Transient error is not thrown when returning startNode and endNode on a deleted relationship. 
• The AggregationSkippedNull warning is not sent going forward as this is the expected behaviour.
• Database alias can now be used as default database. See Operations Manual.
• The dbms.cluster.recreateDatabase() procedure is deprecated in favour of dbms.recreateDatabase(), which recreates a database while keeping all RBAC settings. See Operations Manual.
• Property-based access control for relationships. See Operations Manual.

 

Fixes

• Server

  • Fixes a bug in backup chains that sometimes prevents the latest one from being picked up.

• Cypher

  • Fixes a bug that could cause incorrect ‘Mixing label expression symbols (‘|’, ‘&’, ‘!’, and ‘%’) with colon (‘:’) between labels is not allowed..’ errors. #30539
  • Fixes a bug where EXPLAIN would sometimes report slightly modified return columns if these variables were reused in the query. #30366
  • Fixes an issue in Legacy runtime where relationships created in a FOREACH block would all be created with a rightward direction ie FOREACH (… | CREATE (a)<-[:R]-(b)) would create (a)-[:R]->(b) relationship #30197

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 2025.04.0 – The most popular community library developed for the database, is fully supported (included in Labs directory).
• Bloom 6.x-2.21.0 – 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 2025.02.0  – 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 2025.04.0 -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 2.17.0 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 1.12.3 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).