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Purge Node

purgeNode is a Cypher procedure available by default in Quine that "hard-deletes" a node, the data that node owns, and the history of data associated with the node from Quine. Data is deleted not only from the materialized graph, but also from the journals and snapshots in the persistor, as well as other auxiliary node managed data stores.

Purpose

purgeNode may be preferred over soft-deletion (eg DETACH DELETE) when:

  1. the node will not be necessary for future queries
  2. reducing the volume of persistor-managed data is important (eg, given limited disk space)
  3. historical queries are not in use (as purgeNode removes historical records)

Application

As a cypher procedure, purgeNode can be invoked via typical CALL syntax: WITH n CALL purgeNode(n) RETURN "success", or, minimally, CALL purgeNode(n). The argument n may be any of:

  • a node ID (eg, from id() or idFrom())
  • a node variable (eg, from MATCH (n) ...)
  • a stringified node ID (eg, from strId() or a string literal)

The Cypher query engine will delete the node data including snapshots, journals, and standing query bookkeeping, before the CALL completes.

Example for deleting a node by id: CALL purgeNode(idFrom('customer', 'abandoned-cart-1'))

Example for (a slow, all-node scan) query deleting all nodes with a certain label MATCH (n:DeleteMe) CALL purgeNode(n)