CivicGraph: An Open Source Versioning Data Store for Time Variant Graph Data

I would like to introduce an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed project of mine: https://github.com/CivicGraph/CivicGraph

CivicGraph is a versioned-graph data store - it retains all changes that its data (vertices and edges) that have gone through to reach their current state. It supports point-in-time graph traversals, letting the user query any past state of the graph just as easily as the present.

It is a Foxx Microservice for ArangoDB that features VCS-like semantics in many parts of its interface, and is backed by a transactional event tracker. It is currently being developed and tested on ArangoDB v3.5, with support for v3.6 in the pipeline.

CivicGraph is a potential fit for scenarios where data is best represented as a network of vertices and edges (i.e., a graph) having the following characteristics:

Both vertices and edges can hold properties in the form of attribute/value pairs (equivalent to JSON objects).Documents (vertices/edges) mutate within their lifespan (both in their individual attributes/values and in their relations with each other).Past states of documents are as important as their present, necessitating retention and queryability of their change history.

Its API is split into 3 top-level categories:

Document

• Create - Create single/multiple documents (vertices/edges).
• Replace - Replace entire single/multiple documents with new content.
• Delete - Delete single/multiple documents.
• Update - Add/Update specific fields in single/multiple documents.
• (Planned) Explicit Commits - Commit a document's changes separately, after it has been written to DB via other means (AQL / Core REST API / Client).
• (Planned) CQRS/ES Operation Mode - Async implicit commits.

Event

• Log - Fetch a log of events (commits) for a given path pattern (path determines scope of documents to pick). The log can be optionally grouped/sorted/sliced within a specified time interval.
• Diff - Fetch a list of forward or reverse commands (diffs) between commits for specified documents.
• (Planned) Branch/Tag - Create parallel versions of history, branching off from a specific event point of the main timeline. Also, tag specific points in branch+time for convenient future reference.
• (Planned) Materialization - Point-in-time checkouts.

History

• Show - Fetch a set of documents, optionally grouped/sorted/sliced, that match a given path pattern, at a given point in time.
• Filter - In addition to a path pattern like in 'Show', apply an expression-based, simple/compound post-filter on the retrieved documents.
• Traverse - A point-in-time traversal (walk) of a past version of the graph, with the option to apply additional post-filters to the result.

I hope some of you may find this a useful service to address several types of data modeling challenges pertaining to retention and querying of historical graph data.