LOAD PARQUET.
To load Parquet files containing a JSON string column, which is then converted into a graph structure, see: turing-parquet.
LOAD PARQUET
LOAD PARQUET queries may be used to load a graph into TuringDB. The command is of the following format:
{AS <graph name>} may be omitted, in which case the name of the graph will be that of the directory.
The directory specified need contain nodes.parquet and edges.parquet.
Each row in nodes.parquet defines a node, and the file has a required format of:
- a column of name
__idof typeINT64- defines the relative node ID for the row; - a column of name
__labelsof typeBYTE_ARRAYwith exactly 1 level of nesting, forming a byte array of byte arrays - each inner byte array is treated as a string (the name of that label), the path of each element must be__labels.list.element.
edges.parquet defines an edge, and the file has a required format of:
- a column of name
__sourceof typeINT64- defines the node ID (present innodes.parquet) of the source node of this edge; - a column of name
__targetof typeINT64- defines the node ID (present innodes.parquet) of the target node of this edge; - a column of name
__typeof typeBYTE_ARRAYwith exactly 0 levels of nesting - interpreted as a string (the name of this edge type).
nodes.parquet and edges.parquet may contain any number of extra columns, all of which are interpreted as a property value for the node/edge of that row. These columns may have any name (other than the names of the columns explicitly required above).
The supported types for property columns are:
BOOLEANINT64DOUBLEBYTE_ARRAYwith exactly 0 levels of nesting
BYTE_ARRAY are treated as strings
turing-parquet
turing-parquet is a CLI tool that reads node and edge Parquet files and writes a TuringDB graph to disk. Copy the resulting graph directory into your TuringDB working directory and open it with turingdb.
When to use it
- You have one or more Parquet tables of nodes and edges (a common shape for biomedical, financial, or web-scale knowledge graphs).
- Per-row properties are encoded as a JSON string column (typically named
properties), possibly containing nested objects and arrays. - You want nested JSON sub-records to be expanded into their own nodes with
HAS_*edges, with automatic deduplication of repeated values.
Quick usage
mygraph under ./turingdb.out/graphs/. Move that subdirectory into your TuringDB working directory (default $HOME/.turing/graphs/) and load it with load graph mygraph.
Expected file format
turing-parquet expects a fixed set of top-level columns on each file. Other columns are ignored.
Node files (-nodes):
Edge files (
-edges):
Import steps
The example below uses the OptimusKG biomedical knowledge graph (190,531 nodes across 10 entity types and ~21.8M edges across 26 relation types), shipped asnodes.parquet and edges.parquet.
1
Run turing-parquet against your files
The tool prints the inferred schema, a JSON property-type breakdown, an edge-type histogram, and the final node/edge/sub-record counts.
2
Copy the graph into your TuringDB working directory
turingdb start at the import directory directly with -turing-dir ./turingdb.out.)3
Load the graph and query it
- Cypher
- Python SDK
Your Parquet files are now a queryable TuringDB graph.
Sub-record expansion
Because the properties column is JSON, nested structure in the source data is preserved as part of the graph. For OptimusKG, this turns 190,531 source rows into about 5M nodes.Mapping rules
- Each scalar JSON field on a node becomes a property on that node.
- Each nested object becomes a separate node linked by a
HAS_<FIELD>edge. - Each array of objects becomes multiple sub-record nodes via repeated
HAS_<FIELD>edges. - Sub-records with the same inferred label and
id/valueare deduplicated into a single shared node. A handful of distinct:Tractabilityvalues can be referenced by hundreds of thousands of genes.
Example
Take a single row innodes.parquet for the gene TSPAN6:
The
properties JSON, pretty-printed:
Deduplication in action
If a second gene row also has"tractability": {"id": "T1", ...}, the importer recognizes the matching id and reuses the same :Tractability node instead of creating a duplicate:
In the real OptimusKG dataset, just 19 distinct :Tractability nodes back the 528,500 HAS_TRACTABILITY edges from every gene that references one. The natural key is id when present, falling back to value and then to the full sub-record content.
Verify the import
- Cypher
- Python SDK

