Implementing the Typed Graph Data Model Using Relational Database Technology

TL;DR

This paper presents a method to implement typed graph data models within relational databases, combining graph and relational features for improved data management.

Contribution

The work introduces a novel implementation of the typed graph data model in relational databases, integrating graph features directly into the database system.

Findings

Supports typed graph models within RDBMS

Retains key features of both graph and relational databases

Enables direct reflection of data models in database implementation

Abstract

Recent standardization work for database languages has reflected the growing use of typed graph models (TGM) in application development. Such data models are frequently only used early in the design process, and not reflected directly in underlying physical database. In previous work, we have added support to a relational database management system (RDBMS) with role-based structures to ensure that relevant data models are not separately declared in each application but are an important part of the database implementation. In this work, we implement this approach for the TGM: the resulting database implementation is novel in retaining the best features of the graph-based and relational database technologies.