Best way to delete all nodes and relationships in Cypher - neo4j

Question

What is the best way to cleanup the graph from all nodes and relationships via Cypher?
At http://neo4j.com/docs/stable/query-delete.html#delete-delete-a-node-and-connected-relationships the example
MATCH (n)
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)-[r]-()
DELETE n,r
has the note:
This query isn’t for deleting large amounts of data
So, is the following better?
MATCH ()-[r]-() DELETE r
and
MATCH (n) DELETE n
Or is there another way that is better for large graphs?

Answer 1

As you've mentioned the most easy way is to stop Neo4j, drop the data/graph.db folder and restart it.
Deleting a large graph via Cypher will be always slower but still doable if you use a proper transaction size to prevent memory issues (remember transaction are built up in memory first before they get committed). Typically 50-100k atomic operations is a good idea. You can add a limit to your deletion statement to control tx sizes and report back how many nodes have been deleted. Rerun this statement until a value of 0 is returned back:
MATCH (n)
OPTIONAL MATCH (n)-[r]-()
WITH n,r LIMIT 50000
DELETE n,r
RETURN count(n) as deletedNodesCount

Answer 2

According to the official document here:
MATCH (n)
DETACH DELETE n
but it also said This query isn’t for deleting large amounts of data. so it's better use with limit.
match (n)
with n limit 10000
DETACH DELETE n;

Answer 3

Wrote this little script, added it in my NEO/bin folder.
Tested on v3.0.6 community
#!/bin/sh
echo Stopping neo4j
./neo4j stop
echo Erasing ALL data
rm -rf ../data/databases/graph.db
./neo4j start
echo Done
I use it when my LOAD CSV imports are crappy.
Hope it helps

Answer 4

What is the best way to clean up the graph from all nodes and relationships via Cypher?
I've outlined four options below that are current as of July 2022:
Option 1: MATCH (x) DETACH DELETE x
Option 2: CALL {} IN TRANSACTIONS
Option 3: delete data directories
Option 4: delete in code
Option 1: MATCH (x) DETACH DELETE x - works only with small data sets
As you posted in your question, the following works fine, but only if there aren't too many nodes and relationships:
MATCH (x) DETACH DELETE x
If the number of nodes and/or relationships is high enough, this won't work. Here's what "not working" looks like against http://localhost:7474/browser/:
There is not enough memory to perform the current task. Please try increasing 'dbms.memory.heap.max_size' in the neo4j configuration (normally in 'conf/neo4j.conf' or, if you are using Neo4j Desktop, found through the user interface) or if you are running an embedded installation increase the heap by using '-Xmx' command line flag, and then restart the database.
And here's what
shows up in neo4j console output (or in logs, if you have that enabled):
Exception: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError thrown from the UncaughtExceptionHandler in thread "neo4j.Scheduler-1"
Option 2: CALL {} IN TRANSACTIONS - does not work as of July 2022
An alternative, available since 4.4 according to neo4j docs, is to use a new CALL {} IN TRANSACTIONS feature:
With 4.4 and newer versions you can utilize the CALL {} IN TRANSACTIONS syntax [...] to delete subsets of the matched records in batches until the full delete is complete
Unfortunately, this doesn't work in my tests. Here's an example attempting to delete relationships only:
MATCH ()-[r]-()
CALL { WITH r DELETE r }
IN TRANSACTIONS OF 1000 ROWS
Running that in browser results in this error:
A query with 'CALL { ... } IN TRANSACTIONS' can only be executed in an implicit transaction, but tried to execute in an explicit transaction.
In code, it produces the same result. Here's an attempt connecting via bolt in Java:
session.executeWrite(tx -> tx.run("MATCH (x) " +
"CALL { WITH x DETACH DELETE x } " +
"IN TRANSACTIONS OF 10000 ROWS"));
which results in this error, identical to what the browser showed:
org.neo4j.driver.exceptions.DatabaseException: A query with 'CALL { ... } IN TRANSACTIONS' can only be executed in an implicit transaction, but tried to execute in an explicit transaction.
at org.neo4j.driver.internal.util.Futures.blockingGet(Futures.java:111)
at org.neo4j.driver.internal.InternalTransaction.run(InternalTransaction.java:58)
at org.neo4j.driver.internal.AbstractQueryRunner.run(AbstractQueryRunner.java:34)
Looking at the documentation for Transactions, it states: "Transactions can be either explicit or implicit." What's the difference? From that same doc:
Explicit transactions:
Are opened by the user.
Can execute multiple Cypher queries in sequence.
Are committed, or rolled back, by the user.
Implicit transactions, sometimes called auto-commit transactions or :auto transactions:
Are opened automatically.
Can execute a single Cypher query.
Are committed automatically when the query finishes successfully.
I can't determine from docs or experimentation how to open an implicit transaction (and thus, to be able to use 'CALL { ... } IN TRANSACTIONS' structure), so this is apparently a dead end.
In a recent Neo4j AuraDB Office Hours posted May 31, 2022, they tried using this same feature in AuraDB. It didn't work for them either, though the behavior was different from what I've observed in Neo4j Community. I'm guessing they'll address this at some point, feels like a bug, but at least for now it's another confirmation that
'CALL { ... } IN TRANSACTIONS' is not the way forward.
Option 3: delete data directories - works with any size data set
This is the easiest, most straightforward mechanism that actually works:
stop the server
manually delete data directories
restart the server
Here's what that looks like:
% ./bin/neo4j stop
% rm -rf data/databases data/transactions
% ./bin/neo4j start
This is pretty simple. You could write a script to capture this as a single command.
Option 4: delete in code - works with any size data set
Below is a minimal Java program that handles deletion of all nodes and relationships, regardless of how many.
The manual-delete option works fine, but I needed a way to delete all nodes and relationships in code.
This works in Neo4j Community 4.4.3, and since I'm using only basic functionality (no extensions), I assume this would work across a range of other Neo4j versions, and probably AuraDB, too.
import org.neo4j.driver.AuthTokens;
import org.neo4j.driver.GraphDatabase;
import org.neo4j.driver.Session;
public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
String boltUri = "...";
String user = "...";
String password = "...";
Session session = GraphDatabase.driver(boltUri, AuthTokens.basic(user, password)).session();
int count = 1;
while (count > 0) {
session.executeWrite(tx -> tx.run("MATCH (x) WITH x LIMIT 1000 DETACH DELETE x"));
count = session.executeWrite(tx -> tx.run("MATCH (x) RETURN COUNT(x)").single().values().get(0).asInt());
}
}

Answer 5

optional match (n)-[p:owner_real_estate_relation]->() with n,p LIMIT 1000 delete p
In test run, deleted 50000 relationships, completed after 589 ms.

Answer 6

I performed several tests and the best combination was
`call apoc.periodic.iterate("MATCH p=()-[r]->() RETURN r,p LIMIT 5000000;","DELETE r;", {batchSize:10000, parallel: true}`)
(this code deleted 300,000,000 relationships in 3251s)
It is worth noting that using the "parallel" parameter drastically reduces the time.
This for Neo4j 4.4.1
AWS EC2: m5.xlarge
neo4j:
resources:
memory: 29000Mi
configs:
dbms.memory.heap.initial_size: "20G"
dbms.memory.heap.max_size: "20G"
dbms.memory.pagecache.size: "5G"