Object-Oriented Design of Graph Oriented Data Structures

TL;DR

This paper introduces an object-oriented approach with a C++ extension to improve the design and implementation of flexible graph data structure libraries, focusing on graph classification problems.

Contribution

It proposes new object-oriented techniques and a C++ extension to facilitate the development of versatile graph algorithm libraries, especially for classification tasks.

Findings

Developed an extension of C++ for graph data structures

Implemented a pre-compiler supporting the new techniques

Enhanced flexibility in graph classification library design

Abstract

Applied research in graph algorithms and combinatorial structures needs comprehensive and versatile software libraries. However, the design and the implementation of flexible libraries are challenging activities. Among the other problems involved in such a difficult field, a very special role is played by graph classification issues. We propose new techniques devised to help the designer and the programmer in the development activities. Such techniques are especially suited for dealing with graph classification problems and rely on an extension of the usual object-oriented paradigm. In order to support the usage of our approach, we devised an extension of the C++ programming language and implemented the corresponding pre-compiler.