Pointers for GQL and SQL/PGQ
December 6, 2025 · View on GitHub
This page contains pointers to the GQL (Graph Query Language) standard and the SQL/PGQ extension of the SQL standard. Both allow querying property graphs using the visual graph syntax (a.k.a. ASCII art syntax) popularized by Cypher.
Implementations
Systems supporting GQL and SQL/PGQ
| System | Language | Developed in |
|---|---|---|
| DuckPGQ | SQL/PGQ | academia |
| Google Cloud Spanner Graph | GQL | industry |
| GraphLite | GQL | industry |
| Oracle 23ai | SQL/PGQ | industry |
See also the joint announcement blog post Neo4j and AWS Neptune.
GQL resources
See the opengql GitHub organization (maintained by LDBC) for resources to implement GQL.
- grammar: ANTLR Grammar and related content for GQL.
- editor: GQL Code Editor.
- railroad: Railroad diagrams for the GQL language.
See also the GQL Parser prototype from 2021 by Olof Morra (TU Eindhoven).
Standardization process
- Property Graph Standards, Process & Timing by Keith Hare
- Pattern matching in GQL and SQL/PGQ by Leonid Libkin (2022) – 🎥 recording
- The Upcoming GQL Standard by Stefan Plantikow (2021)
- Towards GQL 1: Status report on the upcoming ISO/IEC graph query language standard by Stefan Plantikow (2021) – 🎥 recording
- An overview of GQL by Petra Selmer (2022) – 🎥 recording
- GQL 2.0: A technical manifesto by Alastair Green (2022) – 🎥 recording
Online Resources
Semantics
- Graph Pattern Matching in GQL and SQL/PGQ (preprint, 2021; paper at SIGMOD 2022) by Alin Deutsch et al. See the related presentation by Leonid Libkin (ENS Paris): 📺 slides, 🎥 recording
Posts, talks, podcasts
- SQL ... and now GQL (2019) by Alastair Green
- GQL and openCypher: the road ahead (2019) by Alastair Green
- PostgreSQL, Oracle ... graph query language standards adoption begins (2020) by Alastair Green
- Alastair Green on GQL: the Graph Query Language – The Graph Show