Shortly before the Spring Data GA release train arrives, we would like to gather some feedback on fixes and updates in Spring Data - Neo4j. That's why we released an Release Candidate 4.

Here is a quick overview of the changes that made it into this release candidate, much longer than we intended to, but still very useful.

Changes in version 2.1.0.RC4 (2012-08-19)

• DATAGRAPH-296 Updates to stable versions of Neo4j 1.8.RC1, spatial, cypher-dsl and java-rest-binding, adopted to API changes
• DATAGRAPH-285 adding application events for save and delete
• DATAGRAPH-263, DATAGRAPH-212, DATAGRAPH-272, DATAGRAPH-147 refactored derived query creation, added support for multiple indexed fields and all query keywords
• DATAGRAPH-294 derived finder methods for numerically indexed values
• DATAGRAPH-293 find objects by graph-id
• DATAGRAPH-275 non graceful fallback on empty graph for TypeRepresentationStrategyFactory
• DATAGRAPH-246 allowing entity as parameter to derived finders
• DATAGRAPH-281 Added support for Enums and Dates as parameters to Cypher

Just point your dependency version to 2.1.0.RC4. For now the online resources have not been updated due to manual effort and time constraints. Those will be available for the 2.1.0.RELEASE.

Dear Spring-NOSQL Community,

The new Release Candidate 1 of Spring Data - Neo4j comes with a number of long requested improvements and additions.

First of all, SDN has been updated to Neo4j 1.7.GA which includes operational improvements and new grammar to the Cypher graph query language. To complement the added language features, this release of SDN integrates a new version of the cypher-dsl with an improved API.

By popular request, support for not only unique node entities but also for relationships is now available. This works using either the remote REST-Server or an embedded Neo4j database…

Dear Spring-NOSQL Community,

Since the last release of Spring Data - Neo4j we worked on a number of issues that you raised as important improvements and extensions.

Thanks to Mark Spitzler, Oliver Gierke, Rajaram Ganeshan, Laurent Pireyn for their contributions and all the other community members for the feedback and discussions.

We want to encourage you to give it a try, especially the new things and send us your feedback.

We are aware of the of issues that are still open and want to address them by the 2.1 release which is planned for the end of March - aligned with Neo4j 1.7.

If you have any questions or suggestions don't hesitate to ask on the Spring Forums, the Neo4j Google Group or by raising an issue in JIRA…

Dear Spring Developers and Graphistas,

We're happy to present you with the release of Spring Data Neo4j 2.0 as a small Christmas gift from our side. Spring Data Neo4j is based on Neo4j 1.6.M02.

The major feature of this release is the addition of a simple mapping mode (spring-data-neo4j). Just annotate your POJOs and use a GraphRepository for the usual CRUD and advanced query operations.

For graph-attached POJOs and high performance use-cases, you can employ the advanced mapping mode (spring-data-neo4j-aspects), which leverages AspectJ to enhance your domain class.

Both mapping modes use the same underlying code, which is now based on the Spring Data Commons mapping infrastructure.

We improved the Cypher graph query language support by supporting new Cypher features, adding queries derived from finder-methods to the repositories and extended the result handling conversions to include projections to mapping-interfaces, Pages and more.

Besides also adding preliminary geospatial support provided by the Neo4j-spatial project, we also support new, type-safe Cypher-DSL which can also be used in conjunction with Query-DSL.

The example project are now included with the main source tree so that they are always up-to-date. The cineasts tutorial app is also included in the examples in 3 versions (simple mapping, advanced mapping, REST).

Thanks to the recent public availability of the Neo4j Add-On on Heroku, we included a chapter on how to deploy a Spring Data Neo4j application into the Heroku cloud. You’ll also find an accompanying example application called “todos” that is ready for deployment.

Special Thanks to James and Werner from Junisphere for all the code contributions and fixes.

In the last few weeks we got a lot more feedback on the Spring Forums, on JIRA and on the Neo4j Mailing list. We used your help to remove bugs, improve behaviour and documentation. Thanks a lot to everyone who reported issues and contributed insights.

To learn more about Spring Data Neo4j make sure to watch the introductory webinar by the project lead Michael Hunger and have a look at the extensive guide book. The detailed presentation from the Spring One conference is available on InfoQ.

And then please get your hands dirty and include Spring Data Neo4j in your holiday project which you could use to look at your domain with a fresh perspective.

Happy Holidays!
The Spring-Data and Neo4j Team

Project resources:
Downloads | Reference Card | JavaDocs | Spring Data Graph Guide Book | Changelog | GitHub Repository

Dear Spring Community,

The Spring Data Team and Neo Technology have just released the Release Candidate 1 of Spring Data Neo4j, the integration library for Neo4j the Enterprise NOSQL database.

Integrating the feedback from the very successful SpringOne 2011 and our community we exended the previous Milestone release with new functionality and took care of reported issues.

If you'd like to get an Introduction to Spring Data Neo4j, watch out for our presentations/webinars.

Changes

• Updated Neo4j to 1.5 AspectJ to 1.6.12
• Added repository support for the new Cypher-DSL (1.5.M1) (with QueryDSL support)
• Updated cypher syntax changes for 1.5
• Extended result-handling-dsl to allow changes of container classes
• Added examples for hello-worlds and cypher for both mapping options
• @RelationshipEntity has an fallback relationship-type attribute
• Support for (mutable) @RelatedToVia collections (like Set)
• Relationship-Entities can now be directly instantiated and persisted
• Introduced the concept of a MappingPolicy for the POJO mapping mode (currently @Fetch)
• Simplified cineasts using annotated and derived queries on repositories
• Added repository for access of relationship-related methods
• Improved support for collection properties
• List, Set, Collection, Page as return types on derived and annotated query methods

This is the last step before the final release of the new major version, so we're looking for even more feedback to provide an excellent GA release of Spring Data Neo4j. Please provide it in the forum or the issue tracker.

Project resources: Downloads | Reference Card | JavaDocs | Spring Data Graph Guide Book | Changelog | GitHub Repository

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that the first milestone release (2.0.0.M1) of the new Spring Data Neo4j major version 2.0 is now available!

In the last few weeks the engineers have been busy transforming the existing library under a new name to make it fit for its presentation
at Spring One 2GX next week.

A major internal refactoring split the framework into several submodules, each addressing a different concern.

• spring-data-neo4j: Neo4jTemplate for easy, copying object-graph-mapping, and Spring Data Repositories using persistence entity meta information
• spring-data-neo4j-aspects: transparent object-graph-mapping using AspectJ
• spring-data-neo4j-cross-store: AspectJ based cross-store-persistence between JPA and Neo4j
• spring-data-neo4j-rest: transparent access of a remote Neo4j REST-Server

As part of the refactoring, the source repository was also renamed and re-organized. The previously separated examples and the tutorial project are now included directly in the same github project…

This announcement post is a guest contribution by the developers of the Neo4j team that worked closely with SpringSource's Spring Data team to provide the Spring Data Graph integration library.

For a friendly introduction to Spring Data Graph we’re hosting a free webinar with VMware presented by Neo Technology’s CEO Emil Eifrem on April 20 at two convenient times for the Americas and Europe. [Update: The webinar video is now available on youtube in the SpringSourceDev channel.]

Now that Spring is in the air, the Neo4j and Spring Data teams are happy that almost a year’s worth of work has produced our 1.0 version of the Spring Data Graph library. The Spring Data project aims to bring the convenient programming model of the Spring Framework to NOSQL databases. Spring Data Graph supports graph databases…

Dear Spring Community,

We are pleased to announce that the first release (1.0.0.RELEASE) of the Spring Data Graph 1.0 project with Neo4j support is now available! This marks the first in a series of releases of the Spring Data subprojects over the next few months.

The primary goal of the Spring Data project is to make it easier to build Spring-powered applications that use new data access technologies such as non-relational databases, map-reduce frameworks, and cloud based data services.

A guest blog post detailing the release has been published on the SpringSource Blogs.

The Graph Neo4j module provides integration with the Neo4j graph database. Back in 2010, Rod Johnson and Emil Eifrem started brainstorming about Spring and Neo4j integration including transparent persistence and cross-store support. After an initial prototype it has been further developed in close cooperation between the VMware…