PostgreSQL to pull property graphs from v19 after design flaws
21 days ago
- PostgreSQL is stripping the SQL/PGQ property graph feature from the upcoming v19 release due to systemic locking, dependency, and catalog problems.
- Andres Freund discovered issues: property graphs had awkward catalog representation, pg_dump missed dependencies, cascade drops left orphaned labels and properties causing errors.
- Melanie Plageman highlighted unresolved design questions including orphan cleanup as inadequate and lack of consensus on label/property scoping.
- Further defects found: rewrite paths without locks, weak locks on AlterPropGraph, out-of-bounds reads, zero-column GRAPH_TABLE references, missing privilege checks, dump breakage.
- Other developers reported failures: DROP OWNED BY breakage, silent graph loss from foreign-key edge keys, non-unique keys accepted, column type changes error on dependencies.
- Sami Imseih objected to adding property-graph-specific orphan logic to generic deletion code, calling it compensation for unclean catalog representation.
- Freund concluded the feature is not ready for v19 and may not be ready for v20; Peter Eisentraut agreed to revert, removing release pressure for redesign.