GQL update

Hi, introducing myself to the community, and also taking the opportunity to update people on the GQL initiative (standard property Graph Query Language).

My name's Alastair Green. I'm based in London and I lead the Neo4j team that works on graph query languages standards (openCypher, SQL Property Graph Querying, and the developing GQL concept), and also on research collaborations with academics in this area (for example Prof Leonid Libkin's group at Edinburgh University, among others).

Back in May I wrote the GQL Manifesto. There have been a lot of discussions about how to take this idea forward, with a very positive response -- from those who took part in the poll at the bottom of that page, and subsequently from vendors, researchers and project contributors, including those who've been involved over the last couple of years in openCypher.

In the middle of August Hassan Chafi (who is a senior researcher and language standards participant at Oracle) and I co-chaired a GQL Community Update web meeting, attended by about 45 people, to report on progress and discuss how to work together in the future to maximize public participation in the design of the GQL language while pursuing a formal international standards process so that GQL can emerge as a complement to SQL.

The meeting was recorded, and if you're interested in the query language issue, the future of Cypher and so on, it's worth a listen. [There was a glitch with document sharing around minute 9, but if you put up with a few seconds of dead air at that point, the rest of the recording is all good, I think.] Big thanks to Petra Selmer and Hassan for helping get the recording up on YouTube.

If you're interested in being on the GQL community mailing list, or getting involved actively in any way, or have comments or questions, please reply or contact me here. There will be a forum for GQL coming soon as well.

3 Likes

Welcome, Alastair,

looking forward to further updates. Please keep the community in the loop with further developments.
I also created a GQL & openCypher category where you can post the 2nd part of your introduction as an "Update" topic. Also, the updates for openCypher development and similar discussions can be posted there.