Neo4j has released version 4.1 of its AuraDB, which includes a new Kafka Connect Source connector that enables bi-directional communication between Neo4j and Apache Kafka. This release allows customers to produce the results of Cypher queries to any Kafka topic, making it simple to quickly define connectors that move large data sets into and out of Kafka. The new functionality uses Kafka Connect, a tool for scalably and reliably streaming data between Apache Kafka and other data systems. With this release, Neo4j AuraDB customers can now have full bi-directional support to and from Kafka, unlocking powerful use cases such as flexible fraud detection. The connector works by defining a polling query and interval, handling fetching all data that has changed since the last poll, and producing all of the resulting information to the topic of your choice. This release also deprecates the Neo4j Database plugin in favor of the Kafka Connect approach, which offers several advantages such as easier installation, configuration, and monitoring. The best place to find out more about this release is via the official documentation, or by reaching out to a Neo4j representative.