I know that you can write extensions that you can call from Cypher, but I'd really like to avoid having to write Java. I'm thinking something similar to SQL Server stored procedures. Is this possible, or could I maybe write a Cypher query and wrap it in some minimal Java to make the current capabilities work?
Is there any way to write a stored procedure or something similar, but in Cypher, NOT Java?
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2 Answers
Besides @InverseFalcon's answer, there is really no Transact-SQL or PL/SQL-like languages for graphs yet.
The closest language I am aware of is SAP's GraphScriph:
GraphScript is a domain-specific, read-only graph query language tailored to serve advanced graph analysis tasks and to ease the specification of custom, complex graph algorithms.
Caveats: it is only available in the SAP HANA Graph product, and, as the quote says, it is read-only. For more details, see presentation slides and paper.
If you would like to avoid Java due to its verbosity but are fine with writing general purpose code on the JVM, you might want to try the Kotlin language. However, using anything else than Java tends to introduce some integration issues (across all JVM-based applications, not just Neo4j in particular), so be prepared to tackle those. There is an example project on GitHub for Neo4j Kotlin procedures to get you started. Caveats: even though there is basic Kotlin support in the Eclipse IDE, it's not on par with the IntelliJ edition. So you will probably need an IntelliJ license.
If you have access to APOC Procedures, you can use apoc.cypher.run() (or apoc.cypher.doIt() for write-queries) to execute a string cypher query.
You can always follow the tutorial for creating your own procedure and have it call the appropriate APOC cypher run procedure with a hardcoded query.
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