Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects

Philipp Seifer; Johannes Härtel; Martin Leinberger; Ralf Lämmel; Steffen Staab

doi:10.1145/3357766.3359541

Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects

Philipp Seifer, Johannes Härtel, Martin Leinberger, Ralf Lämmel, Steffen Staab

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Graph data models are interesting in various domains, in part because of the intuitiveness and flexibility they offer compared to relational models. Specialized query languages, such as Cypher for property graphs or SPARQL for RDF, facilitate their use. In this paper, we present an empirical study on the usage of graph-based query languages in open-source Java projects on GitHub. We investigate the usage of SPARQL, Cypher, Gremlin and GraphQL in terms of popularity and their development over time. We select repositories based on dependencies related to these technologies and employ various popularity and source-code based filters and ranking features for a targeted selection of projects. For the concrete languages SPARQL and Cypher, we analyze the activity of repositories over time. For SPARQL, we investigate common application domains, query use and existence of ontological data modeling in applications that query for concrete instance data. Our results show, that the usage of graph query languages in open-source projects increased over the last years, with SPARQL and Cypher being by far the most popular. SPARQL projects are more active in terms of query related artifact changes and unique developers involved, but Cypher is catching up. Relatively few applications use SPARQL to query for concrete instance data: A majority of those applications employ multiple different ontologies, including project and domain specific ones. Common application domains are management systems and data visualization tools.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	SLE 2019 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, co-located with SPLASH 2019
Editors	O. Nierstrasz, J. Gray, B.C.d.S. Oliveira
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages	152-166
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450369817
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3357766.3359541
Publication status	Published - 20 Oct 2019
Externally published	Yes
Event	12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2019, as part of SPLASH 2019 - Athens, Greece Duration: 20 Oct 2019 → 22 Oct 2019

Conference

Conference	12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2019, as part of SPLASH 2019
Country/Territory	Greece
City	Athens
Period	20/10/19 → 22/10/19

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of project LISeQ (LA 2672/1-1) by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Funders	Funder number
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development

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10.1145/3357766.3359541

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Seifer, P., Härtel, J., Leinberger, M., Lämmel, R., & Staab, S. (2019). Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects. In O. Nierstrasz, J. Gray, & B. C. D. S. Oliveira (Eds.), SLE 2019 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, co-located with SPLASH 2019 (pp. 152-166). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357766.3359541

Seifer, Philipp ; Härtel, Johannes ; Leinberger, Martin et al. / Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects. SLE 2019 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, co-located with SPLASH 2019. editor / O. Nierstrasz ; J. Gray ; B.C.d.S. Oliveira. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2019. pp. 152-166

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abstract = "Graph data models are interesting in various domains, in part because of the intuitiveness and flexibility they offer compared to relational models. Specialized query languages, such as Cypher for property graphs or SPARQL for RDF, facilitate their use. In this paper, we present an empirical study on the usage of graph-based query languages in open-source Java projects on GitHub. We investigate the usage of SPARQL, Cypher, Gremlin and GraphQL in terms of popularity and their development over time. We select repositories based on dependencies related to these technologies and employ various popularity and source-code based filters and ranking features for a targeted selection of projects. For the concrete languages SPARQL and Cypher, we analyze the activity of repositories over time. For SPARQL, we investigate common application domains, query use and existence of ontological data modeling in applications that query for concrete instance data. Our results show, that the usage of graph query languages in open-source projects increased over the last years, with SPARQL and Cypher being by far the most popular. SPARQL projects are more active in terms of query related artifact changes and unique developers involved, but Cypher is catching up. Relatively few applications use SPARQL to query for concrete instance data: A majority of those applications employ multiple different ontologies, including project and domain specific ones. Common application domains are management systems and data visualization tools.",

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Seifer, P, Härtel, J, Leinberger, M, Lämmel, R & Staab, S 2019, Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects. in O Nierstrasz, J Gray & BCDS Oliveira (eds), SLE 2019 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, co-located with SPLASH 2019. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, pp. 152-166, 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, SLE 2019, as part of SPLASH 2019, Athens, Greece, 20/10/19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357766.3359541

Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects. / Seifer, Philipp; Härtel, Johannes; Leinberger, Martin et al.
SLE 2019 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, co-located with SPLASH 2019. ed. / O. Nierstrasz; J. Gray; B.C.d.S. Oliveira. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2019. p. 152-166.

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

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Seifer P, Härtel J, Leinberger M, Lämmel R, Staab S. Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects. In Nierstrasz O, Gray J, Oliveira BCDS, editors, SLE 2019 - Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering, co-located with SPLASH 2019. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2019. p. 152-166 doi: 10.1145/3357766.3359541

Empirical study on the usage of graph query languages in open source Java projects

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