Title
Updating Graph Databases with Cypher.
Abstract
The paper describes the present and the future of graph updates in Cypher, the language of the Neo4j property graph database and several other products. Update features include those with clear analogs in relational databases, as well as those that do not correspond to any relational operators. Moreover, unlike SQL, Cypher updates can be arbitrarily intertwined with querying clauses. After presenting the current state of update features, we point out their shortcomings, most notably violations of atomicity and non-deterministic behavior of updates. These have not been previously known in the Cypher community. We then describe the industry-academia collaboration on designing a revised set of Cypher update operations. Based on discovered shortcomings of update features, a number of possible solutions were devised. They were presented to key Cypher users, who were given the opportunity to comment on how update features are used in real life, and on their preferences for proposed fixes. As the result of the consultation, a new set of update operations for Cypher were designed. Those led to a streamlined syntax, and eliminated the unexpected and problematic behavior that original Cypher updates exhibited.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.14778/3352063.3352139
PVLDB
Field
DocType
Volume
Data mining,Graph database,Computer science
Journal
12
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
12
2150-8097
1
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.35
0
9
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alastair Green1232.56
Paolo Guagliardo27410.53
Leonid Libkin33446764.02
Tobias Lindaaker4363.86
Victor Marsault5232.22
Stefan Plantikow6363.19
Martin Schuster721.04
Petra Selmer8232.56
Hannes Voigt96819.45