DAWGS
Database Abstraction Wrapper for Graph Schemas

Purpose
DAWGS is a collection of tools and query language helpers to enable running property graphs on vanilla PostgreSQL
without the need for additional plugins.
At the core of the library is an abstraction layer that allows users to swap out existing database backends (currently
Neo4j and PostgreSQL) or build their own with no change to query implementation. The query interface is built around
openCypher with translation implementations for backends that do not natively support the query language.
Development Setup
For users making changes to dawgs and its packages, the go mod replace
directive can be utilized. This allows changes made in the checked out dawgs repo to be immediately visible to
consuming projects.
Example
replace github.com/specterops/dawgs => /home/zinic/work/dawgs
Building and Testing
The Makefile drives build and test automation. The default make target should suffice for normal
development processes.
make
For validation before handing off a change, run the full test target:
make test_all
make test_all runs unit tests and the integration suites. Integration tests use the CONNECTION_STRING environment
variable and run against the backend selected by that connection string's scheme.
The shared integration cases under integration/testdata/cases and integration/testdata/templates are expected to be
semantically equivalent across supported backends. Avoid driver-specific skips or expected results in those files; add
driver-scoped integration coverage instead when a backend-only capability needs to be tested.
Benign local examples:
export CONNECTION_STRING="postgresql://dawgs:weneedbetterpasswords@localhost:65432/dawgs"
export CONNECTION_STRING="neo4j://neo4j:weneedbetterpasswords@localhost:7687"
Use make test for unit tests only and make test_integration for integration tests only.
Test Metrics
make test writes unit test coverage artifacts under .coverage/:
make test
The stable coverage profile is .coverage/unit.out, and the function coverage summary is .coverage/coverage.txt.
Cyclomatic complexity, CRAP, and quality signal reports are available through dedicated metric targets:
make complexity
make crap
make quality
make metrics
make complexity writes .coverage/cyclomatic.txt. make crap reruns unit tests for a fresh coverage profile, then
writes .coverage/crap.txt, .coverage/crap.json, .coverage/quality.txt, .coverage/quality.json, and a standalone
HTML report at .coverage/metrics.html. The quality section summarizes semantic drift, backend equivalence,
integration/template invariants, fuzz health, mutation score, and benchmark drift. Signals that need external captures are
reported as pending unless their input files are provided.
Generated parser files, tests, vendor code, and testdata are excluded from these reports. The HTML report embeds its CSS
and JavaScript directly in the document, so it can be opened without network access.
Optional quality inputs can be supplied through Make variables:
make quality BACKEND_RESULT_ARGS="-backend-result pg=.coverage/integration-pg.json -backend-result neo4j=.coverage/integration-neo4j.json"
make quality BENCHMARK_REPORT=.coverage/benchmark.json BENCHMARK_BASELINE=.coverage/benchmark-baseline.json
make quality FUZZ_REPORT=.coverage/fuzz.json MUTATION_REPORT=.coverage/mutation.json
make quality_backend captures PostgreSQL and Neo4j integration results for backend equivalence comparison. It requires
PG_CONNECTION_STRING and NEO4J_CONNECTION_STRING. make quality_bench writes benchmark markdown and JSON captures
for later baseline comparison.
Thresholds are report-only by default. To enforce the configured thresholds, run:
make metrics_check
The defaults can be adjusted with CYCLO_TOP, CYCLO_OVER, CRAP_TOP, CRAP_OVER, and BENCHMARK_REGRESSION.