Tripoline: generalized incremental graph processing via graph triangle inequality

Abstract

For compute-intensive iterative queries over a streaming graph, it is critical to evaluate the queries continuously and incrementally for best efficiency. However, the existing incremental graph processing requires a priori knowledge of the query (e.g., the source vertex of a vertex-specific query); otherwise, it has to fall back to the expensive full evaluation that starts from scratch. To alleviate this restriction, this work presents a principled solution to generalizing the incremental graph processing, such that queries, without their a priori knowledge, can also be evaluated incrementally. The solution centers around the concept of graph triangle inequalities, an idea inspired by the classical triangle inequality principle in the Euclidean space. Interestingly, similar principles can also be derived for many vertex-specific graph problems. These principles can help establish rigorous constraints between the evaluation of one graph query and the results of another, thus enabling reusing the latter to accelerate the former. Based on this finding, a novel streaming graph system, called Tripoline, is built which enables incremental evaluation of queries without their a priori knowledge. Built on top of a state-of-the-art shared-memory streaming graph engine (Aspen), Tripoline natively supports high-throughput low-cost graph updates. A systematic evaluation with a set of eight vertex-specific graph problems and four real-world large graphs confirms both the effectiveness of the proposed techniques and the efficiency of Tripoline.