to perform a delete operation on a record that has a relationship with another node, is the proper pattern to first disconnect the node, then delete? or does the delete operation automatically handle the node disconnect to prevent orphaning?

@quadsurf disconnecting a node or deleting it won't delete the other node. To prevent orphaning, you need to delete the other node first. We are already looking into two better approaches for this pattern, cascading deletes and nested deletes: https://github.com/graphcool/feature-requests/issues/47, https://github.com/graphcool/feature-requests/issues/42

cascading and nested deletions will be a very nice feature, can’t wait!