12.1.6 Immutability of Loaded Graphs

The graph, once loaded into the graph server (PGX), the graph and its properties are automatically marked as immutable.

The immutability of loaded graphs is due to the following design choices:

• Typical graph analyses happen on a snapshot of a graph instance, and therefore they do not require mutations of the graph instance.
• Immutability allows PGX to use an internal graph representation optimized for fast analysis.
• In remote mode, the graph instance might be shared among multiple clients.

However, the graph server (PGX) also provides methods to privatize and mutate graph instances for the purpose of analysis. See Graph Mutation and Subgraphs for more information.