GEPH

Graph Enhanced PostgreSQL Handler, or GEPH (pronounced Jeff), is a modified version of PostgreSQL optimized to load large graph datasets quickly. The project builds off of Postgres relase 9.5.2.

Zoo Build Instructions

Initial Build

Clone the GEPH repo onto the Zoo. Then run the following:

cd <path to GEPH repo>

# You can specify where you want your GEPH binaries installed at this step. You
# need to specify a directory in your user folder because we don't have write
# permissions elsewhere on the Zoo. If you want to use gprof to profile the database
# add the '--enable-profiling' flag to the configure script.
./configure --prefix=<absolute path to directory in your user folder> [--enable-profiling]

gmake

# This just tests your build files. It isn't necessary.
gmake check

gmake install

Providing an example for the configure step, I ran the following command:

./configure --prefix=/home/accts/aas85/Workspace/cs438/final-project/geph-build

My git repo is located at: /home/accts/aas85/Workspace/cs438/final-project/geph.

Subsequent Builds

For subsequent builds, you just need to run:

gmake
gmake install

Useful Commands

All of the information in this section comes from Postgres's documentation. I'm just including this brief list of commands for convenience.

# Initialize a new database server.
initdb -D <data directory>

# Start the initialized database server.
pg_ctl -D <data directory> -l <logfile> start

# Create a database.
createdb <database name>

# Connect to the database and start an interactive Postgres terminal.
psql <database name>

# [ Inside the Postgres terminal. ] List the databases on the server.
\l

# [ Inside the Postgres terminal. ] Connect to a different database on the
# server.
\c <database name>

# [ Inside the Postgres terminal. ] List the tables in the current database.
\dt OR \dt+

# Stop the database server.
pg_ctl -D <data directory> stop

Modifications to Configuration Files

To allow non-local clients to send requests to a Postgres server, two configuration files in the server's data directory need to be modified. Working versions of these two files have been placed in the project's sample-config-files/ directory. The modifications / additions have been marked with aggressive comments that look something like this:

# ADDED =======================================================================
...
# ADDED =======================================================================

# MODIFIED ====================================================================
...
# MODIFIED ====================================================================

Profiling GEPH

If you set the '--enable-profiling' flag when building GEPH, a gmon.out file will appear in your current directory. Use gprof to look at the profiling data:

gprof <executible name> gmon.out > gprof.dump