Neo4j unveils graph query language called openCypher

The Neo4j graph NoSQL database team has unveiled an open source graph query language called openCypher. Neo Technology announced the launch of the open source project, which will be accessible to technology providers as a common language for querying graph data. It is based on Neo4j’s query language that is used to accumulate and recover data in the graph database. At present, there is no common query language standard for working with graph databases, like SQL for accessing data in relational databases.

The objective of openCypher is to speed up the growth of graph processing and analysis. Technology providers can implement openCypher inside their tools and platforms. It delivers four major artifacts under a permissive licence:

Language specification: The Cypher language specification is a technical expression of the language syntax to enable parsers to auto-generate the query syntax. A full semantic specification is also planned as a part of the openCypher project.

Reference implementation: Distributed under the Apache 2.0 License, reference implementation is a fully functional implementation of key parts of the stack needed to support Cypher inside a data platform or tool. The first planned deliverable is a parser that will take a Cypher statement and parse it into an abstract syntax tree representation.

Technology compatibility kit (TCK): This consists of tests that software vendors can run on their products, to self-certify support for a given version of Cypher.

Cypher reference documentation: This includes the user documentation describing the use of the Cypher query language with examples and tutorials.

A number of organisations are supporting the openCypher project and these include Oracle, Databricks, Tableau and Linkurious.

You can learn more about openCypher by going on the website’s FAQ page.