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SQL is getting a Property Graph Query extension that should finally match the ease of querying of typical graph DB. That said, RDBMS should cover the basic use case quite well unless you are doing very exotic things with network analytics and such.

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Yes, this will be interesting to see. This is the SQL/PGQ extension that's coming in 2023. On the one hand, as I articulate in my post, GDBMSs are based on relational principles, so building a system that can seamlessly query in relational and graph model is a good idea. On the other hand, there is this: (1) no SQL extension into a graph-based model has been successful historically (e.g., into RDF or XML or even json). That seems to confuse users, so sticking to a single model seems like a good idea. (2) RDBMSs that implement SQL/PGQ will not be very performant unless they change their cores with several techniques I and my research group has been advocating for (e.g., how to do predefined joins, worst-case optimal joins, factorization etc.).

One of the core developers of Kùzu, Guodong Jin, actually wrote his PhD thesis on a project called GRainDB, which showed how to integrate predefined joins into DuckDB, so an RDBMS can be made efficient on "graph workloads". He did this excellent work: https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol15/p1011-jin.pdf, https://www.cidrdb.org/cidr2022/papers/p57-jin.pdf, which articulates a good plan for how RDBMSs can be efficient in a mixed relational-graph model.

Well, it'll be very interesting to see where SQL/PGQ goes...

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