Dynamic frequent subgraph mining algorithms over evolving graphs: a survey

Frequent subgraph mining (FSM) is an essential and challenging graph mining task used in several applications of the modern data science. Some of the FSM algorithms have the objective of finding all frequent subgraphs whereas some of the algorithms focus on discovering frequent subgraphs approximately. On the other hand, modern applications employ evolving graphs where the increments are small graphs or stream of nodes and edges. In such cases, FSM task becomes more challenging due to growing data size and complexity of the base algorithms. Recently we see frequent subgraph mining algorithms designed for dynamic graph data. However, there is no comparative review of the dynamic subgraph mining algorithms focusing on the discovery of frequent subgraphs over evolving graph data. This article focuses on the characteristics of dynamic frequent subgraph mining algorithms over evolving graphs. We first introduce and compare dynamic frequent subgraph mining algorithms; trying to highlight their attributes as increment type, graph type, graph representation, internal data structure, algorithmic approach, programming approach, base algorithm and output type. Secondly, we introduce and compare the approximate frequent subgraph mining algorithms for dynamic graphs with additional attributes as their sampling strategy, data in the sample, statistical guarantees on the sample and their main objective. Finally, we highlight research opportunities in this specific domain from our perspective. Overall, we aim to introduce the research area of frequent subgraph mining over evolving graphs with the hope that this can serve as a reference and inspiration for the researchers of the field.