1. A computer program product comprising a non-transient machine-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by at least one programmable processor, cause the at least one programmable processor to perform operations comprising: instantiating a graph workspace object in a database architecture comprising a database layer; identifying, based on received input, a vertex table of the database layer and a vertex key column in the vertex table, the vertex key column defining a plurality of vertices of a graph representation; also identifying, based on the received input, an edge table of the database layer, an edge key column in the edge table, a source column in the edge table, and a target column in the edge table, the source column and target column defining relationships between vertices of the plurality of vertices; assigning, within the graph workspace object, graph relationships linking the vertices defined by the vertex key column via edges defined by the source column and target column in the edge table; and generating a graph workspace in a higher level programming layer based on the graph workspace object.