2014/09/11 by Olaf Hartig, Hartig, Olaf · 3 citations
Computer Science · #Advanced Database Systems and Queries #Databases (cs.DB) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Graph Theory and Algorithms #Semantic Web and Ontologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1409.3288
openalex publication_date 2014/09/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Both the notion of Property Graphs (PG) and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) are commonly used models for representing graph-shaped data. While there exist some system-specific solutions to convert data from one model to the other, these solutions are not entirely compatible with one another and none of them appears to be based on a formal foundation. In fact, for the PG model, there does not even exist a commonly agreed-upon formal definition. The aim of this document is to reconcile both models formally. To this end, the document proposes a formalization of the PG model and introduces well-defined transformations between PGs and RDF. As a result, the document provides a basis for the following two innovations: On one hand, by implementing the RDF-to-PG transformations defined in this document, PG-based systems can enable their users to load RDF data and make it accessible in a compatible, system-independent manner using, e.g., the graph traversal language Gremlin or the declarative graph query language Cypher. On the other hand, the PG-to-RDF transformation in this document enables RDF data management systems to support compatible, system-independent queries over the content of Property Graphs by using the standard RDF query language SPARQL. Additionally, this document represents a foundation for systematic research on relationships between the two models and between their query languages.