Upgrading from Aura 3.5 to Aura 4

If you have been an early Aura subscriber you may still be running the 3.5 (also called 3.6) version of Aura. As we are deprecating the 3.5 version you now need to move your database to use the new version. This is done by creating a clone or copy of your existing database to a new instance and upgrading this clone to Aura 4. In this way your existing database continues to run  

Preparation:

Review behaviour/breaking changes in versions

As usual, it is important you plan carefully your migration and you should take the time to review the changelogs for all breaking changes between 3.5 and 4.3:

• Change log for 4.0: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/wiki/Neo4j-4.0-changelog 
• Change log for 4.1: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/wiki/Neo4j-4.1-changelog 
• Change log for 4.2: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/wiki/Neo4j-4.2-changelog 
• Change log for 4.3: https://github.com/neo4j/neo4j/wiki/Neo4j-4.3-changelog 

Drivers update

Your application will certainly be ready and amongst the tasks you should (if not already done) upgrade the drivers to be the latest version. This is often the first task you can perform as for all official drivers the latest version works for Aura 3.5 and Aura 4.

Implement changes in Cypher  and/or code:

Based on your usage of Cypher you may need to rework some statements. The safest approach is to plan to have a period of time long enough to test any changes and verify everything works.

Please refer to the list of changes (link below) and make sure to go through all the changes between each minor version:
https://neo4j.com/docs/cypher-manual/4.3/deprecations-additions-removals-compatibility/ 

You are likely to need to have the two versions running for some time until you are confident your application is fully production-ready in Aura 4. 

Upgrading via Clone (upgrades the copy to Aura 4):

Once you are ready, the simplest way is to select your database and in the Settings tab chose to clone.

This will create a clone (or copy) of your database and upgrade it to Aura 4 while you can still safely run your current database in production.

When you clone please pay attention to:

• select the same (or larger) database instance size
• select the region appropriately.

Then you will be presented with the generated new password for the cloned database:

Your new database (cloned) will then display the status "Setting up your database" before becoming running and available.

Important information

• To minimize the loading time we advise dropping the indexes (especially the full-text indexes) and recreate them when the database is cloned.
• The cloning process may take some minutes, so please be patient.