Property Graph Exchange Format

TL;DR

This paper introduces a unified property graph model and serialization format to enable interoperable management and exchange of graph data across diverse database implementations, facilitating easier data sharing and integration.

Contribution

It redefines the property graph model to incorporate existing differences and proposes a general, intuitive serialization format for interoperability.

Findings

Developed converters for existing formats to our serialization

Demonstrated practical interoperability with various graph databases

Provided a basis for creating and exchanging property graph data

Abstract

Recently, a variety of database implementations adopting the property graph model have emerged. However, interoperable management of graph data on these implementations is challenging due to the differences in data models and formats. Here, we redefine the property graph model incorporating the differences in the existing models and propose interoperable serialization formats for property graphs. The model is independent of specific implementations and provides a basis of interoperable management of property graph data. The proposed serialization is not only general but also intuitive, thus it is useful for creating and maintaining graph data. To demonstrate the practical use of our model and serialization, we implemented converters from our serialization into existing formats, which can then be loaded into various graph databases. This work provides a basis of an interoperable platform for creating, exchanging, and utilizing property graph data.