MIDAS: Towards Efficient and Effective Maintenance of Canned Patterns in Visual Graph Query Interfaces

Several visual graph query interfaces (a.k.a gui) expose a set of canned patterns (i.e., small subgraph patterns) to expedite subgraph query formulation by enabling pattern-at-a-time construction. Unfortunately, manual generation of canned patterns is not only labour intensive but also may lack diversity to support efficient visual formulation of a wide range of subgraph queries. Recent efforts have taken a data-driven approach to select high-quality canned patterns for a gui automatically from the underlying graph database. However, as the underlying database evolves, these selected patterns may become stale and adversely impact efficient query formulation. In this paper, we present a novel framework called Midas for efficient and effective maintenance of the canned patterns as the database evolves. Specifically, it adopts a selective maintenance strategy that guarantees progressive gain of coverage of the patterns without sacrificing their diversity and cognitive load. Experimental study with real-world datasets and visual graph interfaces demonstrates the effectiveness of Midas compared to static guis.