Selecting the optimal groups: Efficiently computing skyline k-cliques

Abstract

In many applications, graphs often involve the nodes with multi-dimensional numerical attributes, and it is desirable to retrieve a group of nodes that are both highly connected (e.g., clique) and optimal according to some ranking functions. It is well known that the skyline returns candidates for the optimal objects when ranking functions are not specified. Motivated by this, in this paper we formulate the novel model of skyline k-cliques over multi-valued attributed graphs and develop efficient algorithms to conduct the computation. To verify the group based dominance between two k-cliques, we make use of maximum bipartite matching and develop a set of optimization techniques to improve the verification efficiency. Then, a progressive computation algorithm is developed which enumerates the k-cliques in an order such that a k-clique is guaranteed not to be dominated by those generated after it. Novel pruning and early termination techniques are developed to exclude unpromising nodes or cliques by investigating the structural and attribute properties of the multi-valued attributed graph. Empirical studies on four real datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the skyline k-clique model and the efficiency of the novel computing techniques.