ChronoGraph: Enabling Temporal Graph Traversals for Efficient Information Diffusion Analysis over Time

ChronoGraph is a novel system enabling temporal graph traversals. Compared to snapshot-oriented systems, this traversal-oriented system is suitable for analyzing information diffusion over time without violating a time constraint on temporal paths. The cornerstone of ChronoGraph aims at bridging the chasm between point-based semantics and period-based semantics and the gap between temporal graph traversals and static graph traversals. Therefore, our graph model and traversal language provide the temporal syntax for both semantics, and we present a method converting point-based semantics to period-based ones. Also, ChronoGraph exploits the temporal support and parallelism to handle the temporal degree, which explosively increases compared to static graphs. We demonstrate how three traversal recipes can be implemented on top of our system: temporal breadth-first search (tBFS), temporal depth-first search (tDFS), and temporal single source shortest path (tSSSP). According to our evaluation, our temporal support and parallelism enhance temporal graph traversals in terms of convenience and efficiency. Also, ChronoGraph outperforms existing property graph databases in terms of temporal graph traversals. We prototype ChronoGraph by extending Tinkerpop, a de facto standard for property graphs. Therefore, we expect that our system would be readily accessible to existing property graph users.

A journey in a temporal graph is a sequence of adjacent and dated edges preserving the increasing order of arrival dates to the consecutive edges. When a journey never visits a vertex twice it is also called a temporal path. Given a pair of source and target vertices, a journey connecting them is foremost if the arrival date at the target vertex is the earliest. Like in the static case, there always exists a foremost journey which is also a temporal path because it is useless to circle around an intermediary vertex. It is therefore equivalent to compute the arrival date of a foremost journey or a foremost temporal path.A non-stop journey is a journey where every pair of consecutive edges must also fulfill a maximum waiting time constraint. Foremost non-stop journeys can achieve strictly earlier arrival date than foremost non-stop temporal paths. We present a linear time algorithm computing the earliest arrival date of such a non-stop journey connecting any two given vertices in a given temporal graph.Keywordstemporal graphforemost journeynon-stop journey

In static graphs, the betweenness centrality of a graph vertex measures how many times this vertex is part of a shortest path between any two graph vertices. Betweenness centrality is efficiently computable and it is a fundamental tool in network science. Continuing and extending previous work, we study the efficient computability of betweenness centrality in temporal graphs (graphs with fixed vertex set but time-varying arc sets). Unlike in the static case, there are numerous natural notions of being a “shortest” temporal path (walk). Depending on which notion is used, it was already observed that the problem is #P-hard in some cases while polynomial-time solvable in others. In this conceptual work, we contribute towards classifying what a “shortest path (walk) concept” has to fulfill in order to gain polynomial-time computability of temporal betweenness centrality.

In this research, we designed a universal graph model. We targeted this work on improving graph data organization representation, flexible formation of graph substructures for complex system modeling and generic processing of data organization. We form coherently composed graph modeling features including inheritance hierarchy of basic graph types, data participating graphs of multiple aspects, hierarchically composed and connected graphs, and property-based graph models based on existing graph models. Design cases are used to illustrate its achievement of our design goal. Keywords—graph theory; graph model, multi-aspect graph; hierarchical graph I. INTRODUCTION Computer modeling plays a key role to apply computer's capability in various fields of applications. Effective support of computer modeling should consist of data representation capability, data access and navigation capability, and generic operations for forming more general and reusable generic algorithms. As computer applications keep growing complex in wider areas, we need enhanced computer models capable of supporting these applications. Graph data models are one of the most extensively used discrete mathematical models in computer modeling of various applications from VLSI circuit design, computer system design and modeling, network modeling, etc. Traditional graph libraries such as LEDA(1), Boost Graph Library(2), LINK(3), and GraphStream(4) focuses on single- level directed and undirected graph modeling. Lee's work(5) utilized decorator and visitor patterns to add new vertex data and attach processing during graph traversal. Pizzonia's (6) employed static object-oriented extension of graph property classes associated with corresponding graph operations. Bertault(7) employed an extensible graph property class hierarchy and dynamic property checking. Directed and undirected hypergraphs are not supported in these approaches. Hyperedges in hypergraphs can be represented as vertices in ordinary graphs. Hypergraphs cannot be treated as super types of directed and undirected graphs to support generic algorithms with ordinary graphs. On data organization point of view, these approaches provide various graph organization types but only as single- level specialized graph type. Each of them should be utilized distinctly. Once these graph models need to be combined in a complex data model, designers should add artificial data structures to join them together. Still, such combined data model or its selected subparts cannot be viewed and utilized as if in a single graph model. This requires designers to add more application-specific gluing data structures, processing codes of distinct graph substructures and their gluing logic, and semantically similar but redundant non-generic codes. It thus hinders effective development and reuse of computer models for various complex applications. From our literature survey, we did not find any previous work providing combinational features for flexibly composing graph structures. Our design goal lies in three improvement directions, representation of complex system data organization, flexible formation of graph substructures for processing, and generic processing of data organization as well as individual data. Our main approach is to form coherently composed graph modeling features including inheritance hierarchy of basic graph types, vertex data participating in graphs of multiple aspects, hierarchically composed and connected graphs, and property-based graph models based on existing graph models. It forms a universal graph model of combinations of complex graph-oriented data organizations, flexibly forms various virtual graph substructures for complex system modeling and processing, and support generic processing capability at the graph structure levels and at the leaf data levels. In section 2, we describe refined design goals and the approach of our work. In the following sections, we in sequence introduce planned composed graph modeling features of our universal graph model, including generic accesses among basic graph models, joining multiple graphs into a multi-aspect graph model, generic structuring of graph models, and generic accesses of property-based graph models. In section 7, we introduce its software design and a design case. The last section concludes this research.

The fundamental path planning problem for a mobile robot involves generating a trajectory for point-to-point navigation while avoiding obstacles. Heuristic-based search algorithms like A* have been shown to be efficient in solving such planning problems. Recently, there has been an increased interest in specifying complex path planning problem using temporal logic. In the state-of-the-art algorithm, the temporal logic path planning problem is reduced to a graph search problem, and Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm is used to compute the optimal trajectory satisfying the specification.The A* algorithm, when used with an appropriate heuristic for the distance from the destination, can generate an optimal path in a graph more efficiently than Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. The primary challenge for using A* algorithm in temporal logic path planning is that there is no notion of a single destination state for the robot. We present a novel path planning algorithm T* that uses the A* search procedure opportunistically to generate an optimal trajectory satisfying a temporal logic query. Our experimental results demonstrate that T* achieves an order of magnitude improvement over the state-of-the-art algorithm to solve many temporal logic path planning problems in 2-D as well as 3-D workspaces.

Dynamic graph traversals (DGTs) currently are widely used in many important application domains, especially in this big-data era that urgently demands high-performance graph processing and analysis. Unlike static graph traversals, DGTs in real-world application scenarios require not only fast traversal acceleration itself but also, more importantly, a runtime strategy that can effectively accommodate the ever-evolving nature of the graph structure updates followed by a diverse range of graph traversal algorithms . Because of these special features, state-of-the-art designs on conventional compute-centric architectures (e.g., CPU and GPU) struggle to provide sufficient acceleration for DGT processing due to the dominating irregular memory access patterns in graph traversal algorithms and inefficient platform-specific update mechanisms. In this article, we explore the algorithmic features and runtime requirements of real-world DGTs and identify their unique opportunities of acceleration on the recent Micron Automata Processor (AP), an in-situ memory-centric pattern-matching architecture. These features include the natural mapping between traversal algorithms’ path exploration pattern to classic non-deterministic finite automata processing, AP’s architectural and compilation support for DGTs’ evolving traversal operations, and its inherent hardware fitness. However, despite these benefits, enabling highly efficient DGT execution on AP is non-trivial and faces several major challenges. To tackle them, we propose DynamAP , the first AP framework design that enables fast processing for general DGTs. DynamAP is oblivious to periodical traversal algorithm changes and can address the significant overhead caused by frequent graph updates and AP recompilation through our novel hybrid macro designs and associated efficient updating strategies. We evaluate DynamAP against the current DGT designs on a CPU, GPU, and AP with a range of widely adopted DGT algorithms and real-world graphs. For a single update request , our DynamAP achieves an average speedup of 21.3x (up to 39.2x ) over the state-of-the-art implementation on host-AP architecture; an average speedup of 9.2x (up to 14.7x ) and 1.7x (up to 2.8x ) over two highly optimized DGT design frameworks on a 64-GB Intel(R) Xeon CPU and a 32-GB NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU. DynamAP also maintains high performance and resource utilization for high graph update ratios, and can significantly benefit natural graphs that present a high average vertex degree.

Nowadays, Graph Traversal (GT) is a fundamental procedure for developing a measure in computing systems and algorithms. Graph traversal algorithms usually iterate input datasets of a graph to provide a logical convergence in every iteration. Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) have been utilized broadly as accelerators of GT due to their massive parallelism and accessibility of high-transfer speed memory. Furthermore, graph-based computation is pervasive and challenging for memory systems implementation in a specific time period. This paper provides quadratic and single GPUs, allowing developers to extend graph-based GPU computation effortlessly. The paper concentrates on the creditability and validation of sparse graphs in GPUs. Since the benchmark characteristic of Breadth-First Search (BFS) plays a critical role in graphs, this paper considers a primary characteristic benchmark for BFS computation usage. This paper explores the effectiveness and applicability of BFS for analyzing graph systems by utilizing the mentioned characteristics in BFS computation. This paper also utilizes the penalization of GPU BFS during the analysis and simulation results. In addition, using a comparative simulation result, this paper concludes that improved traversal rates speed up the computation and reduce memory usage for the single and quadratic GPU structures.

Graph searching is one of the simplest and most widely used tools in graph algorithms. Every graph search method is defined using some partic-ular selection rule, and the analysis of the corre-sponding vertex orderings can aid greatly in de-vising algorithms, writing proofs of correctness, or recognition of various graph families. We study graphs where the sets of vertex order-ings produced by two di˙erent search methods coincide. We characterise such graph families for ten pairs from the best-known set of graph searches: Breadth First Search (BFS), Depth First Search (DFS), Lexicographic Breadth First Search (LexBFS) and Lexicographic Depth First Search (LexDFS), and Maximal Neighborhood Search (MNS).

The article discusses the development of an algorithm for the formation of IT project teams. The materials were data from the digital footprint of IT students. The student's digital footprint is a constantly updated set of data, including accounting documents of project disciplines, intermediate results in disciplines, and practical training. The paper provides an example of solving the problem of forming teams using graphs. An algorithm based on a graph model has been proposed, which allows you to build a graph reflecting the interaction of students in past projects. Commands are formed based on the constructed graph. Two approaches to command formation are proposed inside the graph model: based on vertex clustering and using graph traversal. To determine the best team, a graph of student communication is built with text tags representing technologies, programming languages, frameworks, etc. The algorithm was tested on data from students of the IT department of Mathematical Support and Administration of Information Systems of the School of Computer Science and requirements for a real project and tested on the spontaneous distribution of students on projects within the discipline. Using the algorithm, you can estimate how successful the split was. The creation of effective teams plays a key role in the successful implementation of projects, therefore, the proposed algorithm can be useful for teachers and project managers in the IT field. The developed algorithm is planned to be integrated into the IT project executors search web service.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a specialized language for processing graph data and its software implementation. The proposed solution ensures versatility, usability, and efficiency, enabling the execution of both basic graph operations and more complex procedures. The tool supports classical graph algorithms, including shortest path search, graph traversal, and minimum spanning tree construction, as well as applications in modeling and analyzing message transition processes and processing graph-based representations of textual data. A common drawback of many existing graph analysis tools—often implemented as libraries of general-purpose programming languages—is their limited usability. This limitation arises from the fact that the description of graph analysis procedures relies on data structure operations defined in terms of these general-purpose languages, which complicates perception and reduces the clarity of the mathematical methods being implemented. Developing a specialized domain-specific language based on high-level abstractions can address these shortcomings. Such a language will provide a formalized description of methods for analyzing and processing graph models, improving their comprehensibility and accessibility to users. Its software implementation will deliver ready-to-use solutions for executing graph analysis methods. Composing such methods will facilitate solving a wide range of tasks, including the analysis of natural language messages and the study of information publication and dissemination processes in online environments.

This review identifies graph traversal methods as fundamental steps in network analysis that facilitate easy examination of relations within the network. In this review, we plan to discuss multiple graph traversal approaches like depth first search (DFS), breadth first search (BFS), their varieties and indicate how these techniques can be used in practice when analyzing networks. The following is a review methodology covering 10 articles for years 2019 – 2024. The study responds to the question of how to select algorithms for various types of networks with reference to their computational cost and speed. Thus, the authors describe the advantages and drawbacks of the reported techniques, and the topics serve as recommendations for the further advancement of technology. In this respect, the present review also serves to help to close the divide between theory and practice.

How can we maximize the value of accumulated RDF data? Whereas the RDF data can be queried using the SPARQL language, even the SPARQL-based operation has a limitation in implementing traversal or analytical algorithms. Recently, a variety of database implementations dedicated to analyses on the property graph (PG) model have emerged. Importing RDF datasets into these graph analysis engines provides access to the accumulated datasets through various application interfaces. However, the RDF model and the PG model are not interoperable. Here, we developed a framework based on the Graph to Graph Mapping Language (G2GML) for mapping RDF graphs to PGs to make the most of accumulated RDF data. Using this framework, accumulated graph data described in the RDF model can be converted to the PG model, which can then be loaded to graph database engines for further analysis. For supporting different graph database implementations, we redefined the PG model and proposed its exchangeable serialization formats. We demonstrate several use cases, where publicly available RDF data are extracted and converted to PGs. This study bridges RDF and PGs and contributes to interoperable management of knowledge graphs, thereby expanding the use cases of accumulated RDF data.

SimRank is a significant metric to measure the similarity of nodes in graph data analysis. The problem of SimRank computation has been studied extensively, however there is no existing work that can provide one unified algorithm to support the SimRank computation both on static and temporal graphs. In this work, we first propose CrashSim, an index-free algorithm for single-source SimRank computation in static graphs. CrashSim can provide provable approximation guarantees for the computational results in an efficient way. In addition, as the reallife graphs are often represented as temporal graphs, CrashSim enables efficient computation of SimRank in temporal graphs. We formally define two typical SimRank queries in temporal graphs, and then solve them by developing an efficient algorithm based on CrashSim, called CrashSim-T. From the extensive experimental evaluation using five real-life and synthetic datasets, it can be seen that the CrashSim algorithm and CrashSim-T algorithm substantially improve the efficiency of the state-of-the-art SimRank algorithms by about 30%, while achieving the precision of the result set with about 97%.

PG-explorer: Resource Description Framework data exploration with property graphs

Due to the limited capacity of GPU memory, the majority of prior work on graph applications on GPUs has been restricted to graphs of modest sizes that fit in memory. Recent hardware and software advances make it possible to address much larger host memory transparently as a part of a feature known as unified virtual memory. While accessing host memory over an interconnect is understandably slower, the problem space has not been sufficiently explored in the context of a challenging workload with low computational intensity and an irregular data access pattern such as graph traversal. We analyse the performance of breadth first search (BFS) for several large graphs in the context of unified memory and identify the key factors that contribute to slowdowns. Next, we propose a lightweight offline graph reordering algorithm, HALO (Harmonic Locality Ordering), that can be used as a pre-processing step for static graphs. HALO yields speedups of 1.5x-1.9x over baseline in subsequent traversals. Our method specifically aims to cover large directed real world graphs in addition to undirected graphs whereas prior methods only account for the latter. Additionally, we demonstrate ties between the locality ordering problem and graph compression and show that prior methods from graph compression such as recursive graph bisection can be suitably adapted to this problem.