{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,17]],"date-time":"2025-09-17T16:16:27Z","timestamp":1758125787240,"version":"3.44.0"},"reference-count":34,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"3","funder":[{"name":"Data4Health ANR\/CPJ Lyon 1","award":["ANR-21-CE48-0015 VeriGraph, and ANR-24-CE25-1109 VERDI"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["ANR-21-CE48-0015 VeriGraph, and ANR-24-CE25-1109 VERDI"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Trans. Comput. Educ."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,30]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Query languages are the foundations of database teaching and education practices. The broad adoption of graph databases contrasts with the limited research into how they are taught. Contrary to relational databases, graph databases allow navigational queries with higher expressivity and lack an a priori schema. In this article, we design a multi-step exploratory user study investigating these peculiarities and how they impact the student\u2019s learning process. Focusing on the widely used Cypher graph query language, we studied a new taxonomy for classifying the errors around graph queries and conducted an in-depth analysis. Our investigation highlights several learning barriers, including misunderstanding the semantics of language constructs, the confusion between data and schema, and the pattern-matching mechanism. We expect the lessons learned and the derived best teaching practices to have an impact on database education and to influence future generations of students, researchers, and practitioners working on graph database technologies.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3743687","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,6,9]],"date-time":"2025-06-09T08:20:53Z","timestamp":1749457253000},"page":"1-35","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Understanding Student Errors in Graph Query Formulation"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"25","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0008-4051-6008","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Amedeo","family":"Pachera","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"CNRS Liris, Universit\u00e9 Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6664-0620","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Stefania","family":"Dumbrava","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ENSIIE, Paris, France and SAMOVAR, \u00c9vry-Courcouronnes, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9582-869X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Angela","family":"Bonifati","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"CNRS Liris, Universit\u00e9 Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France and IUF, Paris, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1263-4575","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Andrea","family":"Mauri","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"CNRS Liris, Universit\u00e9 Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,20]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_3_2_2","unstructured":"openCypher. 2024. openCypher. Retrieved from https:\/\/opencypher.org\/"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_3_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2839509.2844640"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2899415.2899464"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3596673.3596976"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_6_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3430665.3456308"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_7_2","volume-title":"AMW (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 2100)","author":"Renzo Angles","year":"2018","unstructured":"Angles Renzo. 2018. The property graph database model. In AMW (CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 2100). Retrieved from CEUR-WS.org."},{"key":"e_1_3_3_8_2","unstructured":"Renzo Angles Angela Bonifati Stefania Dumbrava George Fletcher Alastair Green Jan Hidders Bei Li Leonid Libkin Victor Marsault Wim Martens et al. 2022. PG-schema: Schemas for property graphs. arXiv:2211.10962. Retrieved from https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2211.10962"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_9_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3448016.3457561"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_10_2","first-page":"350","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE 40th International Conference on Data Engineering Workshops","author":"Arnoux J\u00e9r\u00f4me","year":"2024","unstructured":"J\u00e9r\u00f4me Arnoux, Angela Bonifati, Alexandra Calteau, Stefania Dumbrava, and Guillaume Gautreau. 2024. Integrating complex pangenome graphs. In Proceedings of the 2024 IEEE 40th International Conference on Data Engineering Workshops. IEEE, 350\u2013354."},{"key":"e_1_3_3_11_2","unstructured":"AWS. 2023. Amazon Neptune. Retrieved from https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/neptune\/"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_12_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-031-01864-0_2"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_13_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jss.2005.06.028"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_14_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/BF00427157"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_15_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3430665.3456314"},{"issue":"2","key":"e_1_3_3_16_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"52","DOI":"10.1145\/3552490.3552504","article-title":"Teaching about data and databases: Why, what, how","volume":"51","author":"Fekete Alan D.","year":"2022","unstructured":"Alan D. Fekete and Uwe R\u00f6hm. 2022. Teaching about data and databases: Why, what, how? SIGMOD Rec. 51, 2 (2022), 52\u201360.","journal-title":"SIGMOD Rec"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_17_2","first-page":"1433","volume-title":"Proceedings of the SIGMOD Conference","author":"Francis Nadime","year":"2018","unstructured":"Nadime Francis, Alastair Green, Paolo Guagliardo, Leonid Libkin, Tobias Lindaaker, Victor Marsault, Stefan Plantikow, Mats Rydberg, Petra Selmer, and Andr\u00e9s Taylor. 2018. Cypher: An evolving query language for property graphs. In Proceedings of the SIGMOD Conference. ACM, 1433\u20131445."},{"key":"e_1_3_3_18_2","unstructured":"Bitnine Global Inc. 2023. AgensGraph. Retrieved from https:\/\/bitnine.net\/agensgraph\/"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_19_2","unstructured":"ISO\/IEC. 2024. ISO\/IEC 39075:2024 Information Technology\u2014Database Languages\u2014GQL. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.iso.org\/standard\/76120.html"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_20_2","unstructured":"Redis Labs. 2017. RedisGrap. Retrieved from https:\/\/oss.redislabs.com\/redisgraph\/"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_21_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/FIE58773.2023.10343409"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_22_2","volume-title":"SQL:1999: Understanding Relational Language Components","author":"Melton Jim","year":"2001","unstructured":"Jim Melton and Alan Simon. 2001. SQL:1999: Understanding Relational Language Components. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA."},{"key":"e_1_3_3_23_2","unstructured":"Memgraph. 2023. Memgraph. Retrieved from https:\/\/memgraph.com\/"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_24_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3446871.3469759"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_25_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3551392"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_26_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3524610.3529158"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_27_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3328778.3366869"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_28_2","unstructured":"Neo4j. 2023. Retrieved from Neo4j. https:\/\/neo4j.com\/"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_29_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Amedeo Pachera Stefania Dumbrava Angela Bonifati and Andrea Mauri. 2024. Supplementary Material. Retrieved from https:\/\/github.com\/pake97\/Understanding-Student-Errors-in-Graph-Query-Formulation","DOI":"10.1145\/3743687"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_30_2","unstructured":"Marcus Paradies. 2017. Graph pattern matching in SAP HANA. Retrieved from https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/ycxu54pr"},{"issue":"11","key":"e_1_3_3_31_2","article-title":"MetaPGN: A pipeline for construction and graphical visualization of annotated pangenome networks","volume":"7","author":"Peng Ye","year":"2018","unstructured":"Ye Peng, Shanmei Tang, Dan Wang, Huanzi Zhong, Huijue Jia, Xianghang Cai, Zhaoxi Zhang, Minfeng Xiao, Huanming Yang, Jian Wang, et al. 2018. MetaPGN: A pipeline for construction and graphical visualization of annotated pangenome networks. GigaScience 7, 11 (Nov. 2018).","journal-title":"GigaScience"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_32_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3434642"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_33_2","unstructured":"solidIT. 2023. DB-Engines Ranking. Retrieved from https:\/\/db-engines.com\/en\/ranking_trend\/graph+dbms"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_34_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3231712"},{"key":"e_1_3_3_35_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3341525.3387406"}],"container-title":["ACM Transactions on Computing Education"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1145\/3743687","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,20]],"date-time":"2025-08-20T17:51:45Z","timestamp":1755712305000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/10.1145\/3743687"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,20]]},"references-count":34,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,30]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1145\/3743687"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3743687","relation":{},"ISSN":["1946-6226"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1946-6226"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,20]]},"assertion":[{"value":"2024-10-28","order":0,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2025-05-04","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2025-08-20","order":3,"name":"published","label":"Published","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}}]}}