MAGE: Matching approximate patterns in richly-attributed graphs

Published: 2014, Last Modified: 04 Mar 2026IEEE BigData 2014EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: Given a large graph with millions of nodes and edges, say a social network where both its nodes and edges have multiple attributes (e.g., job titles, tie strengths), how to quickly find subgraphs of interest (e.g., a ring of businessmen with strong ties)? We present MAGE, a scalable, multicore subgraph matching approach that supports expressive queries over large, richly-attributed graphs. Our major contributions include: (1) MAGE supports graphs with both node and edge attributes (most existing approaches handle either one, but not both); (2) it supports expressive queries, allowing multiple attributes on an edge, wildcards as attribute values (i.e., match any permissible values), and attributes with continuous values; and (3) it is scalable, supporting graphs with several hundred million edges. We demonstrate MAGE's effectiveness and scalability via extensive experiments on large real and synthetic graphs, such as a Google+ social network with 460 million edges.
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