Semantic Property Graph for Scalable Knowledge Graph Analytics

TL;DR

This paper introduces Semantic Property Graph (SPG), a formalized, scalable, and ontology-supported extension of LPG that enables efficient knowledge graph analytics and inference, bridging RDF's expressibility with LPG's scalability.

Contribution

The paper proposes SPG as a formal, ontology-supported extension of LPG, enabling scalable knowledge graph analytics and automated reasoning.

Findings

SPG effectively combines RDF expressibility with LPG scalability.

The framework supports conversion of RDF to SPG in different computing environments.

Cloud-based migration of RDF graphs to SPG is demonstrated.

Abstract

Graphs are a natural and fundamental representation of describing the activities, relationships, and evolution of various complex systems. Many domains such as communication, citation, procurement, biology, social media, and transportation can be modeled as a set of entities and their relationships. Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Labeled Property Graph (LPG) are two of the most used data models to encode information in a graph. Both models are similar in terms of using basic graph elements such as nodes and edges but differ in terms of modeling approach, expressibility, serialization, and target applications. RDF is a flexible data exchange model for expressing information about entities but it tends to a have high memory footprint and inefficient storage, which does not make it a natural choice to perform scalable graph analytics. In contrast, LPG has gained traction as a reliable model in performing scalable graph analytic tasks such as sub-graph matching, network alignment, and real-time knowledge graph query. It provides efficient storage, fast traversal, and flexibility to model various real-world domains. At the same time, the LPGs lack the support of a formal knowledge representation such as an ontology to provide automated knowledge inference. We propose Semantic Property Graph (SPG) as a logical projection of reified RDF into LPG model. SPG continues to use RDF ontology to define type hierarchy of the projected graph and validate it against a given ontology. We present a framework to convert reified RDF graphs into SPG using two different computing environments. We also present cloud-based graph migration capabilities using Amazon Web Services.