# GDLNN: Marriage of Programming Language and Neural Networks for Accurate and Easy-to-Explain Graph Classification

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00374 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.00374/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 13 of its 15 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 13 of 13)

- [Semi-Supervised Classification with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.02907/) (2016)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [A Unified Approach to Interpreting Model Predictions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07874/) (2017)
- [Inductive Representation Learning on Large Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02216/) (2017)
- ["Why Should I Trust You?": Explaining the Predictions of Any Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.04938/) (2016)
- [How Powerful are Graph Neural Networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00826/) (2018)
- [A Comprehensive Survey on Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.00596/) (2019)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks on Graphs with Fast Localized Spectral Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09375/) (2016)
- [Explainability in Graph Neural Networks: A Taxonomic Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15445/) (2020)
- [On Explainability of Graph Neural Networks via Subgraph Explorations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05152/) (2021)
- [Understanding Pooling in Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.05292/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Explainability of Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01958/) (2023)
- [Deformable Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14438/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present GDLNN, a new graph machine learning architecture, for graph classification tasks. GDLNN combines a domain-specific programming language, called GDL, with neural networks. The main strength of GDLNN lies in its GDL layer, which generates expressive and interpretable graph representations. Since the graph representation is interpretable, existing model explanation techniques can be directly applied to explain GDLNN's predictions. Our evaluation shows that the GDL-based representation achieves high accuracy on most graph classification benchmark datasets, outperforming dominant graph learning methods such as GNNs. Applying an existing model explanation technique also yields high-quality explanations of GDLNN's predictions. Furthermore, the cost of GDLNN is low when the explanation cost is included.