Amazon Neptune introduces an alternative query engine (DFE) in lab mode

Posted on: Aug 6, 2020

Amazon Neptune announced a new engine release that introduces an alternative query engine (DFE) in lab mode that can significantly speed up query execution by improving the resource utilization of database instances. DFE runs both SPARQL and Gremlin queries, and supports a wide variety of plan types, including left-deep, bushy, and hybrid plans. 

The DFE uses pre-generated statistics about your graph data to make informed decisions on how to structure queries. The choice of plan type and the number of compute threads used is made automatically based on pre-generated statistics and on the resources that are available in the cluster.

DFE is available in lab mode in this release. Lab mode allows you to test features for development or test purposes before it is available in production. DFE can be enabled or disabled by setting DFEQueryEngine to "enabled" or "disabled" in the neptune_lab_mode parameter in the DB cluster parameter group. You can also disable DFE for a specific query with the useDFE query hint. The Gremlin and the SPARQL explain tell you whether a query is being executed by the DFE.

To get started, please refer to the Amazon Neptune User Guide for more details on DFE.