Chapter 35. Batch Insertion

Table of Contents

Neo4j has a batch insertion facility intended for initial imports, which bypasses transactions and other checks in favor of performance. This is useful when you have a big dataset that needs to be loaded once.

Batch insertion is included in the neo4j-kernel component, which is part of all Neo4j distributions and editions.

Be aware of the following points when using batch insertion:

  • The intended use is for initial import of data.
  • Batch insertion is not thread safe.
  • Batch insertion is non-transactional.
  • Batch insertion will re-populate all existing indexes and indexes created during batch insertion on shutdown.
  • Unless shutdown is successfully invoked at the end of the import, the database files will be corrupt.
[Warning]Warning

Always perform batch insertion in a single thread (or use synchronization to make only one thread at a time access the batch inserter) and invoke shutdown when finished.