March 2014 Summaries

Neo4j 2.0.1 community edition has been released on Windows Azure VM Depot, allowing users to easily deploy a Neo4j instance by copying a pre-configured platform image. This release provides a convenient way for developers to spin up a fresh Neo4j database instance via HTTP through port 7474, enabling them to leverage the power of graph databases in their applications. The virtual machine image can be found on VM Depot's website and instructions are available online, including a blog post with setup and provisioning guidance.

The Spring Data Neo4j team has released version 3.0.1, which supports Neo4j 2.x and introduces several key changes, including a new label-based type representation strategy, support for schema indexes, and improved Cypher query generation for derived finder methods. The default naming convention for type representation has changed, allowing for easier refactorings and a nicer graph model. Schema indexes are now the default and will be automatically used for queries, but legacy indexes are still accessible with explicit configuration. A data-migration utility is not currently available, but Neo4j 2.0 can be upgraded using the `allow_store_upgrade=true` configuration setting. The team is working on providing a migration tool in the next minor release.