Alternative to neo4j-admin copy for 3.5-enterprise

After a few 3rd party imports, our database grew a lot (from a dump of 75mb to 505mb)

After reading the article for space reuse, we tested it:

  1. By migrating our data from Neo4J 3.5 to 4.4 using neo4j-admin copy
  2. Doing a dump of the migrated data in 4.4 => from 505 mb we got to 84 mb - success! it's just perfect!

The issue is that we have a lot of code using 3.5 syntax, so the migration is a tech debt we are not yet ready to pay it.

What's the alternative of defragmentation / saving space in 3.5-enterprise of the neo4j-admin copy?

One of my ideas is to export the cleaned up data from 4.4 in JSON and import it in 3.5 instance, but I'm not sure if the schema works?

Here are the available commands in 3.5-enterprise:

available commands:

General
    check-consistency
        Check the consistency of a database.
    help
        This help text, or help for the command specified in <command>.
    import
        Import from a collection of CSV files or a pre-3.0 database.
    memrec
        Print Neo4j heap and pagecache memory settings recommendations.
    report
        Produces a zip/tar of the most common information needed for remote assessments.
    store-info
        Prints information about a Neo4j database store.

Authentication
    set-default-admin
        Sets the default admin user when no roles are present.
    set-initial-password
        Sets the initial password of the initial admin user ('neo4j').

Clustering
    unbind
        Removes cluster state data for the specified database.

Offline backup
    dump
        Dump a database into a single-file archive.
    load
        Load a database from an archive created with the dump command.

Online backup
    backup
        Perform an online backup from a running Neo4j enterprise server.
    restore
        Restore a backed up database.

@a.marian.alexandru

See GitHub - jexp/store-utils: Utilities to compact, copy, fix, analyse Neo4j stores for a 3.5 equivalent and this was the predecessor to neo4j-admin copy and can be used where neo4j-admin copy is not available.

Regarding

The issue is that we have a lot of code using 3.5 syntax, so the migration is a tech debt we are not yet ready to pay it.

and whereas Neo4j 3.5.0 was released November 2018 ( Neo4j 3.5.0 - Graph Database & Analytics ) it is coming off patch support in 1 month, May 2022 and as such no further patches will be released for 3.5. So it would be in your best interest to upgrade