Knowledge Graph Maintenance

Version: 1.0.0 | Last updated: 2026-07-16 | Maturity: Emerging for automated repair

Purpose

Keep graph knowledge current, correctable, and reconstructable as sources and ontologies change.

Why

Stale edges and bad entity merges spread errors across many answers. Graph derivatives must never outlive source corrections or deletions.

How

Use append/version semantics with valid and transaction time. Process source changes through lineage-aware deltas; tombstone descendants on deletion. Version ontology and migration code, detect orphaned nodes, contradictory edges, merge anomalies, provenance gaps, and ACL drift. Rebuild from authoritative sources on corruption and compare graph/query regressions before promotion.

Tradeoffs

Incremental maintenance is faster but complex; full rebuilds are simpler and safer but expensive. Maintain both a delta path and tested rebuild path.

Anti-patterns

In-place edge mutation without history.
Manual graph fixes that do not correct the source pipeline.
Automated entity merge repair without review.

Enterprise Considerations

Assign ontology and domain stewards, publish freshness/deletion SLOs, and retain migration/audit evidence. Automated LLM repair remains emerging.

Checklist

Temporal/version semantics and lineage are enforced.
Corrections/deletions propagate to all graph descendants.
Integrity, ACL-drift, and contradiction monitors run.
Rebuild and ontology rollback are tested.

References

Changelog

1.0.0 — 2026-07-16: Initial emerging-practice standard.