The Graph Traversal Machine: Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind

Apache TinkerPop^TM is an open source graph computing framework. The project is approaching its 10^th year of existence and the team is about to embark on its fourth and final major release -- TinkerPop4. This article reviews the technical and mythological aspects of The TinkerPop all the while demonstrating how its lore has driven many of its architectural decisions and vice versa. This historical synopsis ends at the project's denouement with a concluding prospectus detailing the major threads of the final version that will enable the integration of any data query language, any data storage system, and any data processing engine. At the point of unification, in the closing chapter, Gremlin will come to understand the meaning of The TinkerPop and that moment will write the final line of code and sentence on a deep rooted project in the field of graph computing.