Question

Found this while reading the Neo4j manual, specifically here, I found the sentence:

“All mutating transactions have to be performed in a transaction.”

Clearly a mutating transaction isn’t just a type of transaction of the latter sort. Could someone help clarify the relationship between each of these things and the database?

Answer 1

It should say all mutating operations should be performed inside a transaction. A mutating operation is stuff like creating or updating a node/relationship, or adding stuff to an index.

If you are using the Java API directly (i.e. not the REST API), then you must wrap each create or update method in a transaction.

Here’s an example of creating and indexing a node, wrapped in a transaction:

https://github.com/espeed/bulbs/blob/master/bulbs/neo4jserver/gremlin.groovy#L11

Note that the code above is the Neo4j Java API, but it’s being used in a Groovy script.

You can execute Groovy scripts via the Neo4j Server Gremlin-Groovy Plugin. This means you have access to the entire Neo4j Java API via REST.