graph-data-management

Pointers for GQL and SQL/PGQ

This page contains pointers to the GQL (Graph Query Language) standard and the SQL/PGQ extension of the SQL standard. Both allow querying property graphs using the visual graph syntax (a.k.a. ASCII art syntax) popularized by Cypher.

Implementations

Systems supporting GQL and SQL/PGQ

System	Language	Developed in
DuckPGQ	SQL/PGQ	academia
Google Cloud Spanner Graph	GQL	industry
GraphLite	GQL	industry
Oracle 23ai	SQL/PGQ	industry

See also the joint announcement blog post Neo4j and AWS Neptune.

GQL resources

See the opengql GitHub organization (maintained by LDBC) for resources to implement GQL.

• grammar: ANTLR Grammar and related content for GQL.
• editor: GQL Code Editor.
• railroad: Railroad diagrams for the GQL language.

See also the GQL Parser prototype from 2021 by Olof Morra (TU Eindhoven).

• thesis
• presentation

Standardization process

• Property Graph Standards, Process & Timing by Keith Hare
  • Database Language Standards Structure and Process, SQL/PGQ - 🎥 recording
  • An update on the GQL & SQL/PGQ standards efforts - 🎥 recording
  • The GQL Standard is Published! Now what? - 🎥 recording
  • New capabilities in the next edition of the GQL standard - 🎥 recording
• Pattern matching in GQL and SQL/PGQ by Leonid Libkin (2022) – 🎥 recording
• The Upcoming GQL Standard by Stefan Plantikow (2021)
• Towards GQL 1: Status report on the upcoming ISO/IEC graph query language standard by Stefan Plantikow (2021) – 🎥 recording
• An overview of GQL by Petra Selmer (2022) – 🎥 recording
• GQL 2.0: A technical manifesto by Alastair Green (2022) – 🎥 recording

Online Resources

• GQL Standard
• The GQL Manifesto
• GQL Wikipedia page

Semantics

• Graph Pattern Matching in GQL and SQL/PGQ (preprint, 2021; paper at SIGMOD 2022) by Alin Deutsch et al. See the related presentation by Leonid Libkin (ENS Paris): 📺 slides, 🎥 recording

Posts, talks, podcasts

• SQL … and now GQL (2019) by Alastair Green
• GQL and openCypher: the road ahead (2019) by Alastair Green
• PostgreSQL, Oracle … graph query language standards adoption begins (2020) by Alastair Green
• Alastair Green on GQL: the Graph Query Language – The Graph Show
  • Query languages, Cypher, SQL/PGQ from 25:15 (~8 minutes)