Techniques are provided for a graph database system that accepts custom graph analytic programs that are written in a high-level graph-specific programming language and compiles the programs into executables that, when executed, directly access graph data of a graph that is stored in the graph database. In this way, a low-level data-access API is avoided. Also, a graph analytic program, which only describes an abstract description of an algorithm, does not include any details regarding data access. In one technique, a user is not required to include explicit parallelization in a graph analytic program in order for the graph analytic program to take advantage of parallelization. A compiler of the graph database system identifies portions of the graph analytic program that can benefit from parallelization and, in response, generates parallelized executable code that corresponds to those portions.