GQL
Graph Query Language
Judgement: Situational
Vendor-neutral property-graph query language — pick when your stack is already on graph databases.
ISO/IEC 39075 standard query language for property graphs, ratified in 2024. The first new ISO data query language standard since SQL; designed to do for graph databases what SQL did for relational ones.
Implemented or in-progress at Neo4j (extending Cypher), TigerGraph, Oracle, Memgraph, AWS Neptune, and others. Heavily influenced by openCypher and ISO SQL/PGQ (the SQL extension for property-graph queries that shipped in SQL:2023).
Why this is listed as niche
First international query-language standard since SQL — the property-graph counterpart to SQL — but adoption is still limited compared to Cypher (Neo4j) and Gremlin. Worth tracking because it gives graph databases the same kind of vendor-neutral baseline SQL gave relational, but it isn't yet the day-to-day surface for most data work.
At a glance
- Category
- Query
- Governance
- ISO/IEC 39075:2024
- Status
- Stable; ISO/IEC 39075:2024 published
- First released
- 2024
Links
Related standards
Other standards in Query.
- SQL — Structured Query Language
- SPARQL — SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language
- Substrait
- MDX — Multidimensional Expressions
See GQL in context
Open the interactive Data Landscape to compare GQL against every other open standard, or grab the raw JSON. Spotted something wrong? Open an issue.