Migration from Relational to Graph Databases: Proposal and Implementation of an Automated Tool

• Gabriel Lisboa Conegero UFPR
• Carmem S. Hara UFPR

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/erbd.2025.7370

Abstract

The growth of unstructured and highly connected data poses challenges for data analysis in relational databases due to the high cost of finding patterns and cross-referencing data. Graph databases have emerged as a solution to these problems, as they allow these interconnections to be represented directly as edges in a graph. In order to benefit from these advantages, there is a need to migrate relational databases to graphs. There are various works and alternatives, such as the native Neo4j ETL tool. However, most of the existing methods present an indirect mapping, which includes an inference step based on concepts from the entity-relationship model. The proposal in this article aims to simplify and speed up the migration process, as well as present a mapping without changing the structure of the data. In addition, we propose the R2G2 tool, which implements the method, guaranteeing total automation of the process.

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