Changes in This Release for This Guide

The following changes apply to property graph support that is shipped with Oracle Graph Server and Client.

Oracle Graph Server and Client is required for using the property graph feature of Oracle Database (see Oracle Graph Server and Client Installation), and is released four times a year.

New Features

Significant New Features in Oracle Graph Server and Client 21.3

• Oracle Graph Server and Client installation is now supported on Oracle Linux 8.
• Added support for PGQL 1.4.

  Note:

  Graph Server and Client 21.3.0 is backwards compatible with older versions of PGQL (1.0, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3).

  See PGQL 1.4 Specification for more information.

• Added API support to load property graph views by name.

  See Loading a Graph into the Graph Server (PGX) from a Property Graph View for more information.

• Added support for the execution of recursive path queries against property graph views.

  See PGQL Features Supported in Property Graph Views for more information on the supported variable-length path finding goals and horizontal aggregations in recursive queries.

• Added GNNExplainer support to leverage Graph ML explainability for Supervised GraphWise models in PgxML Library.

  See Explaining a Prediction of a Supervised GraphWise Model for more information.

• Added support for creating a PgxFrame from client-side data. Functionality also added to create PgxFrame from Pandas dataframe.

  See Loading a PgxFrame from Client-Side Data for more information.

• Added support for creating a graph from PgxFrame(s).

  See Creating a Graph from Multiple PgxFrame Objects for more information.

• Added new API methods to check graph permissions and to get the user name and the role name of the current user.

  See Checking Graph Permissions Using API for more information.

• Added Python client support for PGQL on RDBMS Java library.

  See Using the Python Client to Execute PGQL Queries for more information.

• Added the following enhancements to the Graph Visualization application:
  • Added support for Oracle Database Kerberos authentication.

    See Kerberos Enabled Authentication for the Graph Visualization Application for more information.

  • Allow configuration of the PGQL driver (Graph Server (PGX) or Database) during login.

    See Configuring Advanced Options for PGQL Driver Selection for more information.

• Added support for Apache HDFS on Cloudera CDH7.

Migrating Property Graph Applications to Oracle Database 21c

From Release 21c onwards, Oracle Graph Server and Client must be installed separately. It is recommended to remove the older property graph libraries from $ORACLE_HOME. See Uninstalling Previous Versions of Property Graph Libraries for more details.

Deprecated Features

• PL/SQL API OPG_APIS.GET_SCN Function
  The PL/SQL API OPG_APIS.GET_SCN function is deprecated. Instead, to retrieve the current SCN (system change number), use the DBMS_FLASHBACK.GET_SYSTEM_CHANGE_NUMBER function:

  SELECT dbms_flashback.get_system_change_number FROM DUAL;

• Two-Table Support

  Support for the two-table format described in Handling Property Graphs Using a Two-Tables Schema was deprecated in 19c and will be removed in a future release.

• Apache Tinkerpop API Support

  Apache Tinkerpop API support for Oracle Database was deprecated in 19c and is scheduled to be removed in a future release.

• OraclePgqlResultSet

  The oracle.pg.rdbms.OraclePgqlResultSet interface was deprecated in 19c and will be removed in a future release. Instead, use the standardized interface oracle.pgql.lang.ResultSet to retrieve values from a PGQL result set.

• Oracle NoSQL Database Support

  Property Graph support for data stored in Oracle NoSQL Database is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

Desupported Features

• Graph property text search based on Apache Solr/Lucene is desupported. Instead, use Oracle Text or PGQL query expressions.
• The PGX property type DATE is desupported. Instead, use LOCAL_DATE or TIMESTAMP.
• Support for the Apache Groovy-based shell was deprecated in 19c and is now desupported.
• Support for Apache HBASE and Apache HDFS on Cloudera CDH5 is desupported.