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Constraint satisfaction algorithms for graph pattern matching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2002

JAVIER LARROSA
Affiliation:
Department of Software, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain
GABRIEL VALIENTE
Affiliation:
Department of Software, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

Graph pattern matching is a central problem in many application fields. Since it is NP-complete, we cannot expect to find algorithms with a good worst-case performance. However, there is still room for general procedures with a good average performance. In this paper we explore four different solving approaches within the constraint satisfaction framework, and introduce a new algorithm, which we call nRF+. The algorithm is a refinement of really full look ahead that takes advantage of the problem structure in order to enhance the look ahead procedure. We give a formal proof that nRF+ is superior to the other approaches in terms of number of visited nodes. An additional contribution of this paper is the introduction of a new benchmark for testing algorithms in this domain. It is formed by a large set of well-defined graphs of very diverse nature. In this benchmark, we show that nRF+ can efficiently solve a broad range of problems, while still leaving many problem instances unsolved. The use of this challenging benchmark is encouraged for future algorithms evaluation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2002 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This paper is a complete and revised version of a lecture given at the workshop on Theory and Applications of Graph Transformations (GRATRA 2000), which was a satellite event of ETAPS 2000 in Berlin, March 2000.