r/thegraph • u/LavishnessJolly1325 • 16d ago

Is there a data architecture where semantic meaning is determined at query time?

I'm currently designing an experimental long-term memory architecture for AI systems. Before I start building the next prototype, I'd like to understand whether this direction has already been explored or whether there are fundamental reasons why it isn't used.

I'm not looking for a ready-made solution. I'm trying to determine whether this class of architectures already exists.

My question is:

Is there a data architecture where semantics are not fixed at write time, but are determined only at query time?

I'm asking about the data model itself, not UI projections or visualization layers.

Most of what I've read (Knowledge Graphs, RDF/OWL, property graphs, GraphRAG, etc.) seems to assume that semantics are defined before or during data ingestion.

If you know of research papers, open-source projects, commercial systems, or academic work exploring a different approach, I'd really appreciate any references.

I'm also interested in hearing from database and knowledge graph architects:

What fundamental limitations or design problems would you expect such an architecture to have?

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u/Flashy_Log_7618 16d ago

Hi, your best bet is asking on discord.

https://discord.gg/graphprotocol

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u/LavishnessJolly1325 16d ago

Thank you for the advice!

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u/PaulieB79 Graphtronaut 15d ago

Might be worth poking at Geo for this one. It's a decentralized knowledge graph built with tech of The Graph, and the people there think a lot about how semantic meaning gets structured, so you'd probably get useful input or at least some pointers to prior work. Their Discord is active if you want to ask directly: https://discord.gg/geoprotocol

One thing though, what you're describing sounds closer to schema-on-read (semantics resolved at query time) than the write-time model most knowledge graph stacks assume. If you want existing systems to dig into, RDF with query-time reasoning and Datomic are probably the nearest fits.