Certified Context-Free Parsing: A formalisation of Valiant's Algorithm in Agda

Valiant (1975) has developed an algorithm for recognition of context free languages. As of today, it remains the algorithm with the best asymptotic complexity for this purpose. In this paper, we present an algebraic specification, implementation, and proof of correctness of a generalisation of Valiant's algorithm. The generalisation can be used for recognition, parsing or generic calculation of the transitive closure of upper triangular matrices. The proof is certified by the Agda proof assistant. The certification is representative of state-of-the-art methods for specification and proofs in proof assistants based on type-theory. As such, this paper can be read as a tutorial for the Agda system

Accelerating transitive closure of large-scale sparse graphs

Finding the transitive closure of a graph is a fundamental graph problem where another graph is obtained in which an edge exists between two nodes if and only if there is a path in our graph from one node to the other. The reachability matrix of a graph is its transitive closure. This thesis describes a novel approach that uses anti-sections to obtain the transitive closure of a graph. It also examines its advantages when implemented in parallel on a CPU using the Hornet graph data structure. Graph representations of real-world systems are typically sparse in nature due to lesser connectivity between nodes. The anti-section approach is designed specifically to improve performance for large scale sparse graphs. The NVIDIA Titan V CPU is used for the execution of the anti-section parallel implementations. The Dual-Round and Hash-Based implementations of the Anti-Section transitive closure approach provide a significant speedup over several parallel and sequential implementations

Graph Kernels

We present a unified framework to study graph kernels, special cases of which include the random walk (Gärtner et al., 2003; Borgwardt et al., 2005) and marginalized (Kashima et al., 2003, 2004; Mahé et al., 2004) graph kernels. Through reduction to a Sylvester equation we improve the time complexity of kernel computation between unlabeled graphs with n vertices from O(n^6) to O(n^3). We find a spectral decomposition approach even more efficient when computing entire kernel matrices. For labeled graphs we develop conjugate gradient and fixed-point methods that take O(dn^3) time per iteration, where d is the size of the label set. By extending the necessary linear algebra to Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces (RKHS) we obtain the same result for d-dimensional edge kernels, and O(n^4) in the infinite-dimensional case; on sparse graphs these algorithms only take O(n^2) time per iteration in all cases. Experiments on graphs from bioinformatics and other application domains show that these techniques can speed up computation of the kernel by an order of magnitude or more. We also show that certain rational kernels (Cortes et al., 2002, 2003, 2004) when specialized to graphs reduce to our random walk graph kernel. Finally, we relate our framework to R-convolution kernels (Haussler, 1999) and provide a kernel that is close to the optimal assignment kernel of Fröhlich et al. (2006) yet provably positive semi-definite

Quantum Algorithms for Matrix Products over Semirings

In this paper we construct quantum algorithms for matrix products over several algebraic structures called semirings, including the (max,min)-matrix product, the distance matrix product and the Boolean matrix product. In particular, we obtain the following results. We construct a quantum algorithm computing the product of two n x n matrices over the (max,min) semiring with time complexity O(n^{2.473}). In comparison, the best known classical algorithm for the same problem, by Duan and Pettie, has complexity O(n^{2.687}). As an application, we obtain a O(n^{2.473})-time quantum algorithm for computing the all-pairs bottleneck paths of a graph with n vertices, while classically the best upper bound for this task is O(n^{2.687}), again by Duan and Pettie. We construct a quantum algorithm computing the L most significant bits of each entry of the distance product of two n x n matrices in time O(2^{0.64L} n^{2.46}). In comparison, prior to the present work, the best known classical algorithm for the same problem, by Vassilevska and Williams and Yuster, had complexity O(2^{L}n^{2.69}). Our techniques lead to further improvements for classical algorithms as well, reducing the classical complexity to O(2^{0.96L}n^{2.69}), which gives a sublinear dependency on 2^L. The above two algorithms are the first quantum algorithms that perform better than the $\tilde O(n^{5/2})$-time straightforward quantum algorithm based on quantum search for matrix multiplication over these semirings. We also consider the Boolean semiring, and construct a quantum algorithm computing the product of two n x n Boolean matrices that outperforms the best known classical algorithms for sparse matrices. For instance, if the input matrices have O(n^{1.686...}) non-zero entries, then our algorithm has time complexity O(n^{2.277}), while the best classical algorithm has complexity O(n^{2.373}).Comment: 19 page

Provenance à base de semi-anneaux pour les bases de données graphes

The growing amount of data collected by sensors or generated by human interaction has led to an increasing use of graph databases, an efficient model for representing intricate data.Techniques to keep track of the history of computations applied to the data inside classical relational database systems are also topical because of their application to enforce Data Protection Regulations (e.g., GDPR).Our research work mixes the two by considering a semiring-based provenance model for navigational queries over graph databases.We first present a comprehensive survey on semiring theory and their applications in different fields of computer sciences, geared towards their relevance for our context. From the richness of the literature, we notably obtain a lower bound for the complexity of the full provenance computation in our setting.In a second part, we focus on the model itself by introducing a toolkit of provenance-aware algorithms, each targeting specific properties of the semiring of use.We notably introduce a new method based on lattice theory permitting an efficient provenance computation for complex graph queries.We propose an open-source implementation of the above-mentioned algorithms, and we conduct an experimental study over real transportation networks of large size, witnessing the practical efficiency of our approach in practical scenarios.We finally consider how this framework is positioned compared to other provenance models such as the semiring-based Datalog provenance model.We make explicit how the methods we applied for graph databases can be extended to Datalog queries, and we show how they can be seen as an extension of the semi-naïve evaluation strategy.To leverage this fact, we extend the capabilities of Soufflé, a state-of-the-art Datalog solver, to design an efficient provenance-aware Datalog evaluator. Experimental results based on our open-source implementation entail the fact this approach stays competitive with dedicated graph solutions, despite being more general.In a final round, we discuss on some research ideas for improving the model, and state open questions raised by our work.L'augmentation du volume de données collectées par des capteurs et générées par des interactions humaines a mené à l'utilisation des bases de données orientées graphes en tant que modèle de représentation efficace pour les données complexes.Les techniques permettant de tracer les calculs qui ont été appliqués aux données au sein d'une base de données relationnelle classique sont sur le devant de la scène, notamment grâce à leur utilité pourfaire respecter les régulations sur les données privées telles que le RGPD en Union Européenne.Notre travail de recherche croise ces deux problématiques en s'intéressant à un modèle de provenance à base de semi-anneaux pour les requêtes navigationnelles.Nous commençons par présenter une étude approfondie de la théorie des semi-anneaux et de leurs applications au sein des sciences informatiques en se concentrant sur les résultats ayant un intérêt direct pour notre travail de recherche.La richesse de la littérature sur le domaine nous a notamment permis d'obtenir une borne inférieure sur la complexité de notre modèle.Dans une seconde partie, nous étudions le modèle en lui-même et introduisons un ensemble cohérent d'algorithmes permettant d'effectuer des calculs de provenance et adaptés aux propriétés des semi-anneaux utilisés.Nous introduisons notablement une nouvelle méthode basée sur la théorie des treillis permettant de calculer la provenance pour des requêtes complexes.Nous proposons une implémentation open-source de ces algorithmes et faisons une étude expérimentale sur de larges réseaux de transport issus de la vie réelle pour attester de l'efficacité pratique de notre approche.On s'intéresse finalement au positionnement de ce cadre de travail par rapport à d'autres modèles de provenance à base de semi-anneaux. Nous nous intéressons à Datalog en particulier.Nous démontrons que les méthodes que nous avons développées pour les bases de données orientées graphes peuvent se généraliser sur des requêtes Datalog. Nous montrons de plus qu'elles peuvent être vues comme des généralisations de la méthode semi-naïve.En se basant sur ce fait-là, nous étendons les capacités de Soufflé, un évaluateur Datalog appartenant à l'état de l'art, afin d'effectuer des calculs de provenance pour des requêtes Datalog.Les études expérimentales basées sur cette implémentation open-source confirment que cette approche reste compétitive avec les solutions spécifiques pour les graphes, mais tout en étant plus générale.Nous terminons par une discussion sur les améliorations possibles du modèle et énonçons les questions ouvertes qui ont été soulevées au cours de ce travail