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Gremlin Steps

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okram edited this page Apr 16, 2013 · 21 revisions

Gremlin is a graph traversal language developed by TinkerPop. Faunus’ Gremlin steps are implemented in MapReduce. For sake of clarity, the Gremlin that compiles down to Pipes and is used for real-time traversals against a graph database is denoted Gremlin/Pipes. The Gremlin that is distributed with Faunus and compiles down to MapReduce is denoted Gremlin/Faunus.


There are major conceptual differences between Gremlin/Pipes and Gremlin/Faunus. These differences are itemized below.

  • Gremlin/Faunus is breadth-first. Gremlin/Pipes is depth-first.
  • Gremlin/Faunus processes rows of an adjacency matrix (vertex-centric). Gremlin/Pipes processes elements in a linked-list (element-centric).
  • Gremlin/Faunus is inherently parallel with each vertex being operated on simultaneously. Gremlin/Pipes is inherently serial with one element at a time being pushed through the pipeline.

The table below presents the steps provided with Gremlin/Faunus.

Gremlin/Faunus step Description Reduce?
transforms
_ the identity step that simply updates Hadoop counters false
transform(closure) evaluate the closure on current elements false
V start a traversal at all vertices false
E start a traversal at all edges false
v(id..) start a traversal at vertices with provided id false
out(labels..) traverse out from vertices to label-related vertices true
in(labels..) traverse in from vertices to label-related vertices true
both(labels..) traverse both directions from vertices to label-related vertices true
outE(labels..) traverse from vertices to outgoing label edges true
inE(labels..) traverse from vertices to incoming label edges true
bothE(labels..) traverse from vertices to in and out label edges true
outV traverse from edges to outgoing vertices false
inV traverse from edges to incoming vertices false
bothV traverse from edges to both in and out vertices false
property(key,class?) emit element property values (class? for optimization) false
path emit the path taken up to the current elements false
order(order,key) order the previous properties and identify element by key true
filters
filter(closure) A generic filter that takes a boolean-closure false
has(key,values..) filter elements that don’t have key/value property (values or’d) false
has(key,compare,values..) filter elements that don’t have compared key/value property (values or’d) false
hasNot(key,values..) filter elements that do have key/value property (values or’d) false
hasNot(key,compare,values..) filter elements that do have compared key/value property (values or’d) false
interval(key,value1,value2) filter elements that don’t have value in range false
dedup remove any duplicates in current traversal step false
back(step) go back to elements seen at previous step true
simplePath filter all elements reached by a cyclic, non-simple path false
side-effects
sideEffect(closure) mutate elements according to the provided closure false
as(name) name the previous step for future reference false
linkOut(label,step,key?) create outgoing edge to previous vertices with key? being a weight property true
linkIn(label,step,key?) create incoming edge to previous vertices with key? being a weight property true
keep remove all elements not at current step (of current type) true[v]/false[e]
drop remove all elements at current step (of current type) true[v]/false[e]
groupCount count the number of previously specified properties (a distribution) true
groupCount(closure,closure) process current elements with closure and incr count with closure true
script(filename,args..) compute the script file against all vertices in the graph false

Note on Path-Based Traversals

When a computation requires the history of a traversal, combinatoric explosions can occur which are expensive in terms of both space (the size of the output) and time (computing the output). The following steps are steps that turn on path computations. By default, path computations are turned off unless enablePath() is explicitly called within the expression.

  • path
  • simplePath
  • back
  • linkOut
  • linkIn

When paths are turned on, Faunus provides a WARN message.

gremlin> g.V.out.path
12/09/17 09:00:25 WARN mapreduce.FaunusCompiler: Path calculations are enabled for this Faunus job (space and time expensive)
...

In short, be wary of long (or non-filtering) traversals that make use of path information as this can greatly hinder performance and lead to memory issues (even disk memory issues!).

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