CREATE

CREATE (a:Person {name: 'Alice', age: 30})-[:KNOWS]->(b:Person {name: 'Bob', age: 25})

Create nodes and relationships in one statement. Returns nothing unless you add RETURN.

Syntax#

CREATE (variable:Label {key: value, ...}) [RETURN variable]
CREATE (a:Label {props})-[:TYPE]->(b:Label {props})

DDL forms — declare label schemas:

CREATE NODE LABEL Label (
  col TYPE, ...
)
[VIRTUAL FROM PARTITION '<lake-uri-pattern>']
[COMPUTE
  derived_col = <expr>,
  ...
];

Examples#

Create a node#

CREATE (n:Person {name: 'Eve', age: 28}) RETURN n

Declare a virtual label over a Lakehouse partition#

CREATE NODE LABEL Frame (
  agent_id       STRING,
  ts             TIMESTAMP,
  agent_position DOUBLE[3]
) VIRTUAL FROM PARTITION 'lake://fleet/telemetry/{mission}/{day}/{shard}';

Rows stay in the parquet partitions; the engine holds the typed schema

• adjacency + catalog pointer. See the virtual labels cookbook for the full walkthrough.

Declare derived properties with COMPUTE#

CREATE NODE LABEL FrameRelToTarget VIRTUAL FROM PARTITION
  'lake://fleet/telemetry/{mission}/{day}/{shard}'
  COMPUTE
    position_relative_to_target = agent_position - target_position,
    distance_to_target = sqrt(
        (agent_position[0] - target_position[0]) ^ 2 +
        (agent_position[1] - target_position[1]) ^ 2 +
        (agent_position[2] - target_position[2]) ^ 2
    );

COMPUTE columns are evaluated by the Smart Reader at row-decode time against the decoded RecordBatch. The values surface in Node.properties alongside parquet-resident columns; predicates on them push down through the planner. Row data on disk is unchanged — the derived properties exist only as values flowing through the scan. See virtual computed columns for the full surface.

Notes#

• Node IDs are engine-assigned (monotonic NodeId).
• Properties are set at creation time. Use SET for mutations.
• For upsert semantics (find-or-create), use MERGE.
• VIRTUAL FROM PARTITION and COMPUTE are DDL-only modifiers on CREATE NODE LABEL — they declare a class, they don't create individual nodes. Once registered, MATCH (:Frame) traverses the rows in the bound partitions.

See Also#

• MERGE — upsert
• DELETE — removal
• SET — property mutation
• Virtual computed columns — the COMPUTE clause in depth
• World Store layer — the substrate the VIRTUAL FROM PARTITION clause binds against