pgRDF

RDF, SPARQL, SHACL and OWL reasoning inside PostgreSQL.

pgRDF is a PostgreSQL extension written in Rust. With it you can:

• load RDF into your database;
• query and update it with SPARQL 1.1;
• reason over it with OWL 2 RL or RDFS;
• validate it with SHACL;
• fingerprint and export it.

Every operation is a SQL function call, so any PostgreSQL client already works with it.

SELECT pgrdf.add_graph('http://example.org/people');

SELECT pgrdf.parse_turtle($$
  @prefix ex:   <http://example.org/> .
  @prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/> .
  ex:alice foaf:name "Alice" ; foaf:knows ex:bob .
  ex:bob   foaf:name "Bob" .
$$, pgrdf.graph_id('http://example.org/people'));

SELECT * FROM pgrdf.sparql($$
  PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>
  SELECT ?who ?friend WHERE { ?a foaf:name ?who ; foaf:knows ?b . ?b foaf:name ?friend }
$$);
--  {"who": "Alice", "friend": "Bob"}

Try it in two minutes

With Docker and nothing else, run the extension in a stock postgres:18 container:

VER=0.6.34
ARCH=$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/aarch64/arm64/')
curl -fsSL https://github.com/styk-tv/pgRDF/releases/download/v$VER/pgrdf-$VER-pg18-glibc-$ARCH.tar.gz | tar -xz

docker create --name pgrdf -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=pgrdf -p 5432:5432 \
  postgres:18 -c shared_preload_libraries=pgrdf
docker cp pgrdf-$VER-pg18-glibc-$ARCH/lib/pgrdf.so       pgrdf:/usr/lib/postgresql/18/lib/
docker cp pgrdf-$VER-pg18-glibc-$ARCH/share/extension/.  pgrdf:/usr/share/postgresql/18/extension/
docker start pgrdf

until docker exec pgrdf pg_isready -h localhost -U postgres -q; do sleep 1; done
docker exec -it pgrdf psql -U postgres -c 'CREATE EXTENSION pgrdf'
docker exec -it pgrdf psql -U postgres

Then follow the ten-minute tour: load a graph, query it, reason over it, validate it, lock it and fingerprint it. When you're done, docker rm -f pgrdf removes everything.

Other ways to install (your own image, an existing server, Kubernetes, from source) are in the install guide.

What's inside

Load	Turtle, N-Triples, TriG, N-Quads, from SQL strings or server files. Parallel loaders for very large N-Triples dumps. → Loading
Query	SPARQL 1.1: SELECT, ASK, CONSTRUCT, DESCRIBE; OPTIONAL, UNION, MINUS, VALUES, BIND, subqueries, aggregates, property paths, named graphs. Results are JSONB rows you can join with any table. → Querying
Update	SPARQL 1.1 UPDATE: INSERT / DELETE DATA, INSERT / DELETE … WHERE, CREATE / CLEAR / DROP GRAPH. Transactional like any SQL. → Update
Reason	OWL 2 RL or RDFS materialization, stored beside your data and never mixed into it, with a freshness flag that tells you when to re-run. → Reasoning
Validate	W3C SHACL Core (passes the 25/25 conformance suite) plus SHACL-SPARQL, with the report returned as JSONB. → Validation
Manage graphs	Inventory, copy / move / clear / drop, carve out subgraphs by predicate or neighbourhood, write locks, integrity checks. → Graphs
Identify and export	Canonical graph digests (W3C RDFC-1.0), canonical N-Triples export, and a manifest anyone can check offline with sha256sum. → Identity
Diagnose	Standard SQLSTATE error codes, per-query completeness figures, and a queryable list of supported functions. → Diagnostics

Scale

The same extension runs a few triples in a container and very large graphs on one server:

• a complete Wikidata "truthy" dump, 8.2 billion triples, loaded into a single instance;
• the full load → reason → query pipeline at LUBM-500, ending in a 112-million-quad materialized closure.

Documentation

• pgrdf.styk.tv: the documentation site, with feature deep dives, worked examples and the internals.
• User guide: install, the tour, loading, querying, reasoning, graphs, validation, identity, diagnostics, and a function reference.
• Client examples: Python · Node.js / TypeScript · Go · Rust
• CHANGELOG.md: what changed in each release.

Releases and verification

The current version, per-architecture digests and pull commands are in LATEST.md. Every release ships:

• archives with SHA256SUMS on the releases page;

• a signed OCI bundle whose origin you can verify with one command:

  gh attestation verify oci://ghcr.io/styk-tv/pgrdf-bundle:0.6.34 --repo styk-tv/pgRDF

Building from source

See INSTALL.md (Rust + cargo-pgrx) and compose/README.md (Docker-based development setup). How pgRDF works inside is described in the internals section of the documentation site. Bug reports and questions: issues.

License

MIT — © Peter Styk.