Rethinking Flexible Graph Similarity Computation: One-step Alignment with Global Guidance

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Liu, Zhouyang, Liu, Ning, Chen, Yixin, He, Jiezhong, Ma, Shuai, Li, Dongsheng
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Liu, Zhouyang
Liu, Ning
Chen, Yixin
He, Jiezhong
Ma, Shuai
Li, Dongsheng
author_facet Liu, Zhouyang
Liu, Ning
Chen, Yixin
He, Jiezhong
Ma, Shuai
Li, Dongsheng
contents Graph Edit Distance (GED) is a widely used measure of graph similarity, valued for its flexibility in encoding domain knowledge through operation costs. However, existing learning-based approximation methods follow a modeling paradigm that decouples local candidate match selection from both operation costs and global dependencies between matches. This decoupling undermines their ability to capture the intrinsic flexibility of GED and often forces them to rely on costly iterative refinement to obtain accurate alignments. In this work, we revisit the formulation of GED and revise the prevailing paradigm, and propose Graph Edit Network (GEN), an implementation of the revised formulation that tightly integrates cost-aware expense estimation with globally guided one-step alignment. Specifically, GEN incorporates operation costs into node matching expenses estimation, ensuring match decisions respect the specified cost setting. Furthermore, GEN models match dependencies within and across graphs, capturing each match's impact on the overall alignment. These designs enable accurate GED approximation without iterative refinement. Extensive experiments on real-world and synthetic benchmarks demonstrate that GEN achieves up to a 37.8% reduction in GED predictive errors, while increasing inference throughput by up to 414x. These results highlight GEN's practical efficiency and the effectiveness of the revision. Beyond this implementation, our revision provides a principled framework for advancing learning-based GED approximation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_06533
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rethinking Flexible Graph Similarity Computation: One-step Alignment with Global Guidance
Liu, Zhouyang
Liu, Ning
Chen, Yixin
He, Jiezhong
Ma, Shuai
Li, Dongsheng
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Data Structures and Algorithms
Graph Edit Distance (GED) is a widely used measure of graph similarity, valued for its flexibility in encoding domain knowledge through operation costs. However, existing learning-based approximation methods follow a modeling paradigm that decouples local candidate match selection from both operation costs and global dependencies between matches. This decoupling undermines their ability to capture the intrinsic flexibility of GED and often forces them to rely on costly iterative refinement to obtain accurate alignments. In this work, we revisit the formulation of GED and revise the prevailing paradigm, and propose Graph Edit Network (GEN), an implementation of the revised formulation that tightly integrates cost-aware expense estimation with globally guided one-step alignment. Specifically, GEN incorporates operation costs into node matching expenses estimation, ensuring match decisions respect the specified cost setting. Furthermore, GEN models match dependencies within and across graphs, capturing each match's impact on the overall alignment. These designs enable accurate GED approximation without iterative refinement. Extensive experiments on real-world and synthetic benchmarks demonstrate that GEN achieves up to a 37.8% reduction in GED predictive errors, while increasing inference throughput by up to 414x. These results highlight GEN's practical efficiency and the effectiveness of the revision. Beyond this implementation, our revision provides a principled framework for advancing learning-based GED approximation.
title Rethinking Flexible Graph Similarity Computation: One-step Alignment with Global Guidance
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06533