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Safe process for recreating database after a incremental import #2704

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Safe process for recreating database after an incremental import
jackwaudby Nov 6, 2025
d883312
Remove line about needing to be unchanged
jackwaudby Nov 6, 2025
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15 changes: 9 additions & 6 deletions modules/ROOT/pages/import.adoc
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Expand Up @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ You should use this tool when:

* Import performance is important because you have a large amount of data (millions/billions of entities).
* The database can be taken offline and you have direct access to one of the servers hosting your Neo4j DBMS.
* The database is either empty or its content is unchanged since a previous incremental import.
* The database is either empty.
* The CSV data is clean/fault-free (nodes are not duplicated and relationships' start and end nodes exist).
This tool can handle data faults but performance is not optimized.
If your data has a lot of faults, it is recommended to clean it using a dedicated tool before import.
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -688,13 +688,16 @@ Incremental import into an existing database.

[WARNING]
====
The importer works well on standalone servers.
To safely use the importer in a clustered environment please use the following process.

In clustering environments with multiple copies of the database, the updated database must be used as a source to reseed the rest of the database copies.
You can use the procedure xref:procedures.adoc#procedure_dbms_recreateDatabase[`dbms.recreateDatabase()`].
For details, see xref:database-administration/standard-databases/recreate-database.adoc[Recreate databases].
Use the importer to import the database into one server in the cluster.
This server can then be the source for other cluster members to copy the database from using the xref:clustering/databases.adoc#cluster-designated-seeder[designated seeder] approach.

Starting the clustered database after an incremental import without reseeding or performing the incremental import on a single server while the database remains online on other clustered members may result in unpredictable consequences, including data inconsistency between cluster members.
To perform an incremental import in a clustered environment first alter the database topology to 1 primary using xref:procedures.adoc#procedure_dbms_recreateDatabase[`dbms.recreateDatabase()`].
Then stop the database using xref::database-administration/standard-databases/start-stop-databases.adoc#manage-databases-stop[STOP DATABASE].
Perform the incremental import against the server hosting the database.
Then start the database using xref::database-administration/standard-databases/start-stop-databases.adoc#manage-databases-start[START DATABASE].
Lastly, alter the database back to the desired topology using xref::database-administration/standard-databases/alter-databases.adoc#[ALTER DATABASE].
====

The incremental import command can be used to add:
Expand Down