Four ways to check the consistency of a Neo4j graph
When it comes checking the inconsistencies in your graph, there are four methods to do. This article describes them below:
1. The easiest approach is it to utilize the check-consistency=true
option with the backup
command. With this approach your graph stays online and the consistency check is done along with the scheduled or adhoc backup.
neo4j-home> bin/neo4j-admin backup --backup-dir=/home/backups --name=graph.db --check-consistency=true
2. If you are not checking the consistency through the backup
command, then you will need to stop Neo4j to check its consistency.
neo4j-home> bin/neo4j stop
neo4j-home> bin/neo4j-admin check-consistency --database=graph.db
3. There will be situations when you would want to test the consistency of a backup. Here is how that is done:
neo4j-home> bin/neo4j-admin check-consistency --backup=/<path-to-backup-dir>/<graph_backup.db>
4. Using the dump
and load
commands is the recommended, and safe, way of transferring databases between environments. It is possible to check the consistency of an offline dump.
Assume you have the dump file sitting in: /mnt/dump_of_dbs
-
The dump file is a
gzip
file. To confirm the format, perform these commands:$ cd /mnt/dump_of_db $ file graph.db.dump graph.db.dump: gzip compressed data
You will see that the .dump
file is a gzip
file.
-
Create a directory under
mnt/dump_of_dbs
$ mkdir graph.db
-
Uncompress the
gzip
file under thegraph.db
directory:$ cd graph.db ~/dump_of_dbs/graph.db$ tar xvzf ../graph.db.dump
-
Finally, run the consistency check as:
neo4j-home> bin/neo4j-admin check-consistency --backup=/mnt/dump_of_dbs/graph.db
End Notes:
-
The inconsistencies report is generated only when there are inconsistencies in the graph. So, you can have a process to trigger an alert if the report is created. The filename appears in this format:
inconsistencies-yyyy-mm-dd.hh.mm.ss.report
. -
If the inconsistencies are discovered, follow the link below and use the specific methods to resolve them: https://support.neo4j.com/hc/en-us/articles/218047648-How-do-I-resolve-Consistency-Check-errors
Was this page helpful?