Formal Semantics of the Language Cypher
Nadime Francis, Alastair Green, Paolo Guagliardo, Leonid Libkin,, Tobias Lindaaker, Victor Marsault, Stefan Plantikow, Mats Rydberg, Martin, Schuster, Petra Selmer, and Andr\'es Taylor
TL;DR
This paper develops a formal denotational semantics for the core read-only fragment of Cypher, a popular graph query language, to clarify its theoretical foundations and support reliable implementation.
Contribution
It introduces the first formal semantics for Cypher's core features, including pattern matching and table operations, enhancing understanding and correctness.
Findings
Provides a rigorous mathematical model of Cypher's core language features
Clarifies the semantics of pattern matching and filtering in Cypher
Lays groundwork for future formal analysis and implementation validation
Abstract
Cypher is a query language for property graphs. It was originally designed and implemented as part of the Neo4j graph database, and it is currently used in a growing number of commercial systems, industrial applications and research projects. In this work, we provide denotational semantics of the core fragment of the read-only part of Cypher, which features in particular pattern matching, filtering, and most relational operations on tables.
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Taxonomy
TopicsGraph Theory and Algorithms · Advanced Database Systems and Queries · Semantic Web and Ontologies