remove attribute from very large number of nodes in neo4j

Question

I have neo4j database with millions of nodes of type person, i want to remove specific attribute of all the person nodes. I tried to achieve it with the match query but it is scanning all nodes.

This is the query that i tried.

MATCH (p:Person)
REMOVE p.fatherName

Is there any other fast alternative to this query,

Answer 1

There is no way to improve performance of that query thru Cypher.

You can try to avoid Nodes without fatherName property

MATCH (p:Person)
WHERE HAS (p.fatherName)
REMOVE p.fatherName

Also what could help is to add LIMIT and run query multipletimes

MATCH (p:Person)
WHERE HAS (p.fatherName)
WITH p LIMIT 100000
REMOVE p.fatherName

I suggest you to write Unmanaged Extension for removing that property.

e.g.

Label nodeLabel = DynamicLabel.label("Person");
String propertyName = "fatherName";

try(Transaction tx = database.beginTx()) {
    final ResourceIterator<Node> people = database.findNodes(nodeLabel);

    for (Node person : IteratorUtil.asCollection(people)) {
        if (person.hasProperty(propertyName)) {
            person.removeProperty(propertyName);
        }
    }

    tx.success();
}