Stefan Plantikow

Stefan Plantikow is the ISO Project Lead/Editor for the next generation declarative Graph Query Language GQL (ISO/IEC 39075). He works as a Language Designer and Standards expert in Neo4j’s Query Language Standards and Research team.

Before GQL, he played key roles in the design of the Cypher graph query language, the openCypher project, the development of the first cost-based planner for property graph databases, Neo4j’s driver API, and pioneered the architecture of Cypher for Apache Spark and Neo4j Morpheus. In the past, he has worked on enterprise application integration, large-scale climate data management, and scalable overlay networks.

Stefan is passionate about computer language design, how languages as a medium enable access to new technology, and related topics, as well as continuously exploring how to expand the scope and applicability of graph technology in a way that makes it easily accessible to users.

2021 Talk: The Upcoming GQL Standard

Following the GQL Manifesto, the ISO working group that develops the SQL standard voted to initiate a project for a new database language: GQL (Graph Query Language). This talk presents an overview of the goals of GQL and the progress so far, key aspects of the language design such as the basic data model, catalog structure, and graph pattern matching, as well as the standardization process and community activities surrounding this effort.