The ISO standard Property Graph model has become increasingly popular for representing complex, interconnected data. However, it lacks native support for querying metadata and reification, which limits its abilities to deal with the demands of modern applications. We introduce the vision of Meta-Property Graphs, a backwards compatible extension of the property graph model addressing these limitations. Our approach enables first-class treatment of labels and properties as queryable objects and supports reification of substructures in a graph. We propose MetaGPML, a backwards compatible extension of the Graph Pattern Matching Language forming the core of the ISO standard GQL, to query these enhanced graphs. We demonstrate how these foundations pave the way for advanced data analytics and governance tasks that are challenging or impossible with current property graph systems.

翻译：ISO标准属性图模型在表示复杂关联数据方面日益普及，但其缺乏对元数据查询与物化的原生支持，限制了应对现代应用需求的能力。本文提出元属性图愿景——一种向后兼容的属性图模型扩展方案，旨在解决这些局限。我们的方法将标签与属性作为可查询对象进行一等处理，并支持图中子结构的物化。我们提出MetaGPML，即构成ISO标准GQL核心的图模式匹配语言的向后兼容扩展，用于查询这些增强型图结构。我们论证了这些基础如何为高级数据分析与治理任务铺平道路，而这些任务在当前属性图系统中难以实现或无法完成。