Graph databases, PostgreSQL and SQL/PGQ
Presented by:
Ashutosh Bapat
Ashutosh Bapat is a Major Contributor to PostgreSQL and a developer in BDR team in EnterpriseDB. Apart from BDR and logical replication, he has contributed in the areas of partitioning, FDW, query optimization. He has spoken at PostgreSQL conferences across the globe. He has contributed features to Hive in the areas of replication and metastore.
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Graph databases are a major database paradigm next to relational databases, object databases, document databases and so on. There are popular DBMSes exclusively focusing on graph databases, DBMSes from other paradigms, including traditional SQL as well as NoSQL, have begun to extend their products with graph data capabilities and interfaces. SQL/PGQ was introduced as Part 16 of SQL standard in early 2023. It allows a graph query to be called inside a SQL SELECT. A graph query is a graph pattern specified in a language closer to Cypher, PGQL and G-CORE. The data matching the graph pattern is treated as a SQL result table. SQL/PGQ also contains DDL to allow SQL tables to be mapped to a graph view schema object with nodes and edges associated to sets of labels and set of data properties. In short, it allows a traditional relational database to be viewed as a graph.
PostgreSQL has successfully extended its support to non-relational uses such as document stores. It’s natural for PostgreSQL to support SQL/PGQ, which will be a major addition to its battery of analytical features. We have proposed a patch implementing SQL/PGQ in PostgreSQL [1]. The patch implements most of the DDL and essential graph query constructs.
In this presentation we will discuss the relevant concepts of graph databases, salient features of SQL/PGQ standard and the PostgreSQL implementation.
References: [1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/flat/a855795d-e697-4fa5-8698-d20122126567%40eisentraut.org [2] My introductory blog: https://ashutoshpg.blogspot.com/2024/04/dbaag-with-sqlpgq.html [3] Previous presentation on the topic: https://www.pgcon.org/2019/schedule/events/1300.en.html
- Date:
- Duration:
- 45 min
- Room:
- Conference:
- PGConf India, 2025
- Language:
- Track:
- Application Developer
- Difficulty:
- Medium