A hierarchical approach to reachability query answering in very large graph databases

  • Authors:

  • Saikat K. Dey;Hasan Jamil

  • Affiliations:

  • Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA;Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

  • Venue:
  • CIKM '10 Proceedings of the 19th ACM international conference on Information and knowledge management
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

The cost of reachability query computation using traditional algorithms such as depth first search or transitive closure has been found to be prohibitive and unacceptable in massive graphs such as biological interaction networks, or pathways. Contemporary solutions mainly take two distinct approaches - precompute reachability in the form of transitive closure (trade space for time) or use state space search (trade time for space). A middle ground among the two approaches has recently gained popularity. It precomputes part of the reachability information as a complex index so that most queries can be answered within a reasonable time. In this approach, the main cost now is creation of the index, and response generation using it as well as the space needed to materialize the structure. Most contemporary solutions favor a combination of these costs to be efficient for a class of applications. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical index based on graph segmentation to reduce index size without sacrificing query efficiency. We present experimental evidence to show that our approach can achieve significant space savings, and improve efficiency. We also show that our index need not be rebuilt for a large class of updates, a feature missing in all other contemporary systems.