GDB-Engines

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Gaffer

A graph database framework with pluggable storage backends (Accumulo, HBase, Parquet). Developed by GCHQ for large-scale graph analysis with built-in timestamp management.

Visit website GitHub 1.8k stars
Overall rank
#57
First released
December 2015
License
Apache-2.0
Built with
Java

Details

Vendor
GCHQ
Type
Other
Kind
Query Engine
Category
Established
Status
Deprecated — Repository archived by GCHQ; last change June 2025.
License
Apache-2.0
Language
Java
Query Languages
Custom API
Protocols
HTTP/REST

Feature scores

Community & Business

Active development
✓
Updated within last 3 months
Commercial support
0%
No commercial support
Live community
0%
No community activity data
Open Source
✓
Open source license
Pricing
0%
No pricing information
Trendiness
0%
Declining trend

Deployment

Containerization
0%
No container image
Work as dedicated instance
0%
Embedded mode only
Work as embedded
0%
Standalone only
Testing in-memory version
0%
No in-memory option

Platform

Operating on Linux
✓
Linux officially supported
Operating on Windows
✓
Windows officially supported
SaaS offering
0%
Self-hosted only

Operations

Automatic updates
0%
Manual updates only
Client side caching
0%
No client-side caching
Data versioning support
0%
No versioning
Live backups
0%
No live backups

Distribution

Cluster Re-balancing
0%
No auto-rebalancing
Data Distribution
✓
Data sharding supported
High-Availability
0%
No HA support
Query Distribution
✓
Distributed query execution
Replication support
✓
Replication available

Developer Experience

Data types defined
50%
Basic data types only
Logging/Auditing
✓
Event logging supported
Object-Graph Mapper
✓
OGM/ORM available
Reactive programming
0%
No reactive programming
Documentation up-to-date
✓
Docs current with latest version
Binary protocol
0%
Text-based protocols only
CLI
0%
No CLI
GUI
0%
No GUI

Data Model

Multi-database
0%
Graph-only
Graph-native data
✓
Native graph storage
REST API
✓
REST endpoint available
Query Language
0%
No query language

Transactions

Granular locking
0%
No granular locking
Multiple isolation levels
0%
Read uncommitted only
Read committed transaction
0%
Not available
Transaction support
✓
ACID transactions

Schema & Security

Constraints
0%
No constraints
Schema support
✓
Schema definition tools
Secondary indexes
0%
Primary index only
Server side procedures
0%
No stored procedures
Triggers
0%
No triggers
Authentication
✓
Authentication supported
Authorization
✓
Role-based access control
Data encryption
0%
No encryption
Sources 6 references

Protocols HTTP/REST

Ships a full REST API for a deployed graph instance, and is equally usable as a Java library (graph module + store module) embedded directly in an application.

  • When a graph is deployed, a REST (or RESTful) API will be available at a predefined address.
    Using the REST API - Gaffer Docs · reviewed 2026-08-02
  • To use Gaffer from the Java API the only required dependencies are the Gaffer graph module and a store module
    Gaffer · reviewed 2026-08-02

License Apache-2.0

SPDX identifier as classified by GitHub from the repository licence file.

status deprecated

GitHub reports the repository as archived, which is read-only and signals the project is no longer maintained.

Released 2015-12

Corrects current year-only '2015' to 2015-12: GCHQ open-sourced Gaffer on GitHub in the week of 14-15 December 2015, widely covered in the press.

Language Java

Confirms current value.