A framework and a language for on-line analytical processing on graphs

Abstract

Graphs are essential modeling and analytical objects for representing information networks. Existing approaches, in on-line analytical processing on graphs, took the first step by supporting multi-level and multi-dimensional queries on graphs, but they do not provide a semantic-driven framework and a language to support n-dimensional computations, which are frequent in OLAP environments. The major challenge here is how to extend decision support on multidimensional networks considering both data objects and the relationships among them. Moreover, one of the critical deficiencies of graph query languages, e.g. SPARQL, is the lack of support for n-dimensional computations. In this paper, we propose a graph data model, GOLAP, for online analytical processing on graphs. This data model enables extending decision support on multidimensional networks considering both data objects and the relationships among them. Moreover, we extend SPARQL to support n-dimensional computations. The approaches presented in this paper have been implemented on top of FPSPARQL, Folder-Path enabled extension of SPARQL, and experimentally validated on synthetic and real-world datasets. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.