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An Algebra for Path Manipulation in Graph Databases

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Advances in Databases and Information Systems (ADBIS 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13389))

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Abstract

A key characteristic of current graph query languages is their support for path queries. Although a path query looks for paths in a graph database, current graph query languages are restricted to return just the source and target nodes connected by each solution path. Therefore, the user is not able to manipulate the elements (nodes and edges) of the resulting paths. In order to overcome such restriction, this paper presents an algebra for path manipulation. Inspired by the relational algebra, we defined the operators of selection, projection, node-based join, edge-based join, node-based cartesian product, edge-based cartesian product, union, intersection and difference. These operators are closed under sets of paths, i.e. the input and the output are sets of paths. We study the algebraic properties of the operators and describe use cases that justify the usefulness of the algebra.

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Acknowledgements

R. García was supported by CONICYT PFCHA/BECA DE DOCTORADO NACIONAL/2019 under Grant 21192157. R. Angles was supported by ANID FONDECYT Chile through grant 1221727.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Systems Doctoral Program, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, 3340000, Curicó, Chile

    Roberto García

  2. Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad de Talca, 3340000, Curicó, Chile

    Renzo Angles

  3. Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), Santiago, Chile

    Roberto García & Renzo Angles

Authors
  1. Roberto García
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  2. Renzo Angles
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Correspondence to Roberto García .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Silvia Chiusano

  2. Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy

    Tania Cerquitelli

  3. Poznań University of Technology, Poznań, Poland

    Robert Wrembel

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García, R., Angles, R. (2022). An Algebra for Path Manipulation in Graph Databases. In: Chiusano, S., Cerquitelli, T., Wrembel, R. (eds) Advances in Databases and Information Systems. ADBIS 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13389. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15740-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15740-0_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-15739-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-15740-0

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