Our database has a string store of 44G and a property store of 14G. We are now trying to reduce the size of the database by removing some unused, text heavy properties, but given this description of how Neo4j treats deleting nodes I have a hard time figuring out if the store size will shrink or if Neo4j will simply reserve the space for growth. Note that we are not deleting nodes, only properties.
@SimonThordal the linked document you describe holds true and so a delete will not reduce the size of the files. If you want to reduce the size of the files, and although not stated in the initial problem description but if this is Neo4j 4.2.x then you can use neo4j-admin copy which can be run against a stopped database and will create a copy of said database but only include the 'visible' data.
OK, but how about if you only remove large properties and do not delete the nodes. Does that reduce store size or will it stay the same / grow?
@SimonThordal
Correct, regardless of whether it is nodes, properties, or relationships that you are deleting it all behave the same and as described in my last update
Thanks Dana. Can I just ask once more to be totally clear - deleting nodes, relationships or properties won't change the amount of space used by Neo4J and to reduce the size of the DB we have to use the manual tool, it won't happen on its own like it does with transaction logs. Is that correctly understood?