Essentially given a big graph, sparql finds all the subgraphs that match the given constraints and project the captured variables into a table for every subgraph matched. (Or at least that's how i think about it, not sure if that's officially what it does)

The property path syntax ( https://www.w3.org/TR/sparql11-query/#propertypaths ) does look a lot like regex syntax, and the general triple pattern construct does kind of feel a bit DFA-ish.