Maximal clique enumeration problem on graphs: status and challenges

Abstract

In the era of big-data, graph mining has become a popular research topic. The maximal clique enumeration (MCE), as a basic problem in graph theory, has been widely used in different fields. However, considering the complexity of the MCE problem and the rapid growth in the scale of real-world graphs, enumerating the maximal cliques in real-world graphs is time-consuming. A large number of researches have been done to improve the algorithm for MCE problem, or to reduce the execution time by applying various computational optimizations. On the MCE problem, this survey has done the following work: existing researches on the MCE problem are classified; the research status of the MCE problem is introduced in detail; the challenges and future directions of the MCE problem are discussed.