Element values and references

Nodes and edges can be returned as values, assigned to LET aliases, collected in lists and used by later patterns. A value identifies its graph, element kind and row identity.

MATCH (p:Person {name: 'Alice'}) LET person = p
MATCH (person)-[:Knows]->(friend)
RETURN person, friend.name AS friend;

Property lookups and element predicates work on direct bindings, aliases, values expanded from path/group lists and references exported by independent nested queries. Output aliases are resolved in ordering and grouping contexts.

MATCH (p:Person) RETURN p AS person ORDER BY person.name;

The engine resolves references through DataFusion joins against the statement’s graph snapshot. A reference does not turn into a detached copy of its properties. Updates refresh aliases before later expressions; a scalar captured earlier with LET keeps its already computed value.

Deleted identities cannot be dereferenced later in the same statement. Null references behave as nulls. Driver encoding is described in Arrow results; it is not a supported way to manufacture persistent reference parameters from arbitrary client structs.