Validation of graph databases against PG-Schema

2026-06-04

AI Summary

This study addresses the problem of validating graph database instances against property graph schemas (PG-Schemas) that lack integrity constraints. Employing computational complexity theory and formal verification techniques, the authors establish that this validation problem is NP-complete under combined complexity, yet falls within PTIME under data complexity. The primary contribution lies in precisely delineating the complexity boundary of PG-Schema validation and demonstrating that imposing suitable syntactic restrictions on alternations between composition and union operations in type constructors can reduce the combined complexity to PTIME. This insight opens a feasible pathway toward efficient schema validation for property graph databases.

Abstract

The problem of validating a given graph database instance against a given PG-Schema graph type without integrity constraints is NP- complete in terms of combined complexity and in PTIME in terms of data complexity. The combined complexity drops to PTIME when the alternation between type combinations and unions is suitably restricted

Problem

• graph database
• PG-Schema
• validation
• complexity
• type system

Innovation

• graph database validation
• PG-Schema
• combined complexity
• data complexity
• PTIME