A Comprehensive Data-centric Overview of Federated Graph Learning

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive, data-centric overview of Federated Graph Learning (FGL), emphasizing data properties and usage to better understand and improve FGL methods beyond existing methodology-focused surveys.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-level data-centric taxonomy for FGL, analyzing data characteristics and utilization, and explores integration with pretrained models and real-world applications.

Findings

Proposes a two-level data-centric taxonomy for FGL

Analyzes how data properties influence FGL methods

Highlights future directions in FGL research

Abstract

In the era of big data applications, Federated Graph Learning (FGL) has emerged as a prominent solution that reconcile the tradeoff between optimizing the collective intelligence between decentralized datasets holders and preserving sensitive information to maximum. Existing FGL surveys have contributed meaningfully but largely focus on integrating Federated Learning (FL) and Graph Machine Learning (GML), resulting in early stage taxonomies that emphasis on methodology and simulated scenarios. Notably, a data centric perspective, which systematically examines FGL methods through the lens of data properties and usage, remains unadapted to reorganize FGL research, yet it is critical to assess how FGL studies manage to tackle data centric constraints to enhance model performances. This survey propose a two-level data centric taxonomy: Data Characteristics, which categorizes studies based on the structural and distributional properties of datasets used in FGL, and Data Utilization, which analyzes the training procedures and techniques employed to overcome key data centric challenges. Each taxonomy level is defined by three orthogonal criteria, each representing a distinct data centric configuration. Beyond taxonomy, this survey examines FGL integration with Pretrained Large Models, showcases realistic applications, and highlights future direction aligned with emerging trends in GML.