SQLgraph: An efficient relational-based property graph store

Abstract

We show that existing mature, relational optimizers can be exploited with a novel schema to give better performance for property graph storage and retrieval than popular noSQL graph stores. The schema combines relational storage for adjacency information with JSON storage for vertex and edge attributes. We demonstrate that this particular schema design has benefits compared to a purely relational or purely JSON solution. The query translation mechanism translates Gremlin queries with no side effects into SQL queries so that one can leverage relational query optimizers. We also conduct an empirical evaluation of our schema design and query translation mechanism with two existing popular property graph stores. We show that our system is 2-8 times better on query performance, and 10-30 times better in throughput on 4.3 billion edge graphs compared to existing stores.