On the complexity of finding set repairs for data-graphs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the computational complexity of repairing graph databases to satisfy integrity constraints expressed in Reg-GXPath, showing polynomial algorithms for positive fragments and intractability for full language.

Contribution

It characterizes the complexity of subset and superset repairs in graph databases with Reg-GXPath constraints, identifying tractable and intractable cases.

Findings

Polynomial-time algorithms for positive Reg-GXPath fragments

Intractability results for full Reg-GXPath language

Analysis of repair problems in graph databases

Abstract

In the deeply interconnected world we live in, pieces of information link domains all around us. As graph databases embrace effectively relationships among data and allow processing and querying these connections efficiently, they are rapidly becoming a popular platform for storage that supports a wide range of domains and applications. As in the relational case, it is expected that data preserves a set of integrity constraints that define the semantic structure of the world it represents. When a database does not satisfy its integrity constraints, a possible approach is to search for a 'similar' database that does satisfy the constraints, also known as a repair. In this work, we study the problem of computing subset and superset repairs for graph databases with data values using a notion of consistency based on a set of Reg-GXPath expressions as integrity constraints. We show that for positive fragments of Reg-GXPath these problems admit a polynomial-time algorithm, while the full expressive power of the language renders them intractable.