R2G: a Tool for Migrating Relations to Graphs

We present R2G, a tool for the automatic migration of databases from a relational to a Graph Database Management System (GDBMS). GDBMSs provide a flexible and efficient solution to the management of graph-based data (e.g., social and semantic Web data) and, in this context, the conversion of the persistent layer of an application from a relational to a graph format can be very beneficial. R2G provides a thorough solution to this problem with a minimal impact to the application layer: it transforms a relational database r into a graph database g and any conjunctive query over r into a graph query over g. Constraints defined over r are suitably used in the translation to minimize the number of data access required by graph queries. The approach refers to an abstract notion of graph database and this allows R2G to map relational database into different GDBMSs. The demonstration of R2G allows the direct comparison of the relational and the graph approaches to data management