The Neo4j graph database release 1.1 has arrived, bringing several new features and improvements. The kernel now includes support for monitoring, an event framework, and a new traversal framework to increase flexibility in how traversers can be controlled. The graph algorithm component has been added to the default distribution package, providing implementations of algorithms such as Dijkstra's and A\* for finding shortest paths or all simple paths between nodes. The new traversal framework allows users to select the order in which relationships are followed, exposing the current path during traversal and returning results as nodes, relationships, or paths. Additionally, Neo4j now supports monitoring over JMX, enabling tools like JConsole to inspect live instances and gather statistics on transactions committed, open, and rolled back. The webadmin project has also been improved with lifecycle management, monitoring of memory usage and disk space, data browsing, and advanced data manipulation via the Gremlin console. Other notable changes include read operations no longer requiring transactional context for reading uncommitted data, automatic configuration based on available RAM and heap space, and a new helpers package for creating traversers that return domain objects instead of nodes or relationships. The integrated Lucene index has also been improved with features such as exact lookups, indexing of array values, and support for removing indexes. Finally, online backup is now included in the default distribution package, allowing users to backup their Neo4j database while it's running.