CHORDALITY PROPERTIES ON GRAPHS AND MINIMAL CONCEPTUAL CONNECTIONS IN SEMANTIC DATA MODELS

Abstract

In this paper the problem of finding a minimal connection among a set of objects which represent conceptual entities in a semantic data model is investigated. If we represent the conceptual structure of the reality by means of a k-partite graph this problem corresponds to finding a Steiner tree over a given set of nodes in the graph. In this paper the case of bipartite graphs is considered and it is shown that if the bipartite graphs satisfy suitable chordality properties the Steiner problem may be solved in linear time. Furthermore it is shown that such chordality properties correspond to the concepts of acyclicity which are usually considered in the relational model of data.