Create and query a graph

This document shows you how to use BigQuery Graph to create a graph with financial information and run graph queries using the Graph Query Language (GQL).

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to work with graphs, ask your administrator to grant you the BigQuery Data Editor (roles/bigquery.dataEditor) IAM role on the dataset in which you create the node tables, edge tables, and graph. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

This predefined role contains the permissions required to work with graphs. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to work with graphs:

• Create a graph: bigquery.propertyGraphs.create
• List graphs and their metadata: bigquery.propertyGraphs.list
• Get the metadata and definition of a graph: bigquery.propertyGraphs.get
• Update the metadata and definition of a graph: bigquery.propertyGraphs.update
• Delete a graph: bigquery.propertyGraphs.delete

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Create node and edge tables

Graphs are built from existing BigQuery tables and stored in datasets. To store the tables and graph that you create in the following examples, create a dataset. The following query creates a dataset called graph_db:

CREATE SCHEMA IF NOT EXISTS graph_db;

The following tables contain information about people and accounts, and the relationships between each of these entities:

• Person: information about people.
• Account: information about bank accounts.
• PersonOwnAccount: information about who owns which accounts.
• AccountTransferAccount: information about transfers between accounts.

To create these tables, run the following CREATE TABLE statements:

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE graph_db.Person (
  id               INT64,
  name             STRING,
  birthday         TIMESTAMP,
  country          STRING,
  city             STRING,
  PRIMARY KEY (id) NOT ENFORCED
);

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE graph_db.Account (
  id               INT64,
  create_time      TIMESTAMP,
  is_blocked       BOOL,
  nick_name        STRING,
  PRIMARY KEY (id) NOT ENFORCED
);

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE graph_db.PersonOwnAccount (
  id               INT64 NOT NULL,
  account_id       INT64 NOT NULL,
  create_time      TIMESTAMP,
  PRIMARY KEY (id, account_id) NOT ENFORCED,
  FOREIGN KEY (id) REFERENCES graph_db.Person(id) NOT ENFORCED,
  FOREIGN KEY (account_id) REFERENCES graph_db.Account(id) NOT ENFORCED
);

CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE graph_db.AccountTransferAccount (
  id               INT64 NOT NULL,
  to_id            INT64 NOT NULL,
  amount           FLOAT64,
  create_time