Compressing Hypergraphs using Suffix Sorting
Pith reviewed 2026-05-19 11:11 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
HyperCSA uses suffix sorting to compress hypergraphs to 26-79 percent of original size while supporting faster neighbor queries.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
HyperCSA is a succinct representation of a hypergraph obtained by applying suffix sorting to an encoding of its incidences, which achieves compression ratios of 26 to 79 percent of the original file size on real-world data, scales to larger instances than existing methods, and answers neighbor queries between 6 and 40 times faster than both standard structures and other compressed formats while preserving exact query semantics.
What carries the argument
The HyperCSA structure, a compressed suffix array built over a linearized representation of hyperedges and vertices that directly supports incidence and neighbor queries on the succinct form without full decompression.
If this is right
- Hypergraphs can be stored using substantially less space than existing compression schemes on large real-world instances.
- The same representation scales to datasets too large for prior succinct hypergraph methods.
- Neighbor queries become 6 to 40 times faster than both plain data structures and other compressed alternatives.
- Applications that rely on repeated neighbor lookups, such as recommendation or social-network analysis, can operate on bigger hypergraphs within fixed memory limits.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- The same suffix-sorting idea might apply directly to other higher-order structures such as simplicial complexes or set systems.
- If construction time remains practical, the approach could be integrated into hypergraph database engines to improve both storage and query latency.
- Dynamic versions that support edge insertions while keeping the suffix order updated would further broaden the range of usable applications.
Load-bearing premise
The suffix-sorted encoding of hyperedge incidences can be constructed and queried while preserving every original incidence relation exactly, with no hidden information loss or prohibitive build cost.
What would settle it
A direct comparison on any real-world hypergraph where the set of neighbors returned by HyperCSA differs from the set returned by an uncompressed incidence list.
Figures
read the original abstract
Hypergraphs model complex, non-binary relationships like co-authorships, social group memberships, and recommendations. Like traditional graphs, hypergraphs can grow large, posing challenges for storage, transmission, and query performance. We propose HyperCSA, a novel compression method for hypergraphs that maintains support for standard queries over the succinct representation. HyperCSA achieves compression ratios of 26% to 79% of the original file size on real-world hypergraphs - outperforming existing methods on all large hypergraphs in our experiments. Additionally, HyperCSA scales to larger datasets than existing approaches. Furthermore, for common real-world hypergraphs, HyperCSA evaluates neighbor queries 6 to 40 times faster than both standard data structures and other hypergraph compression approaches.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript introduces HyperCSA, a compression method for hypergraphs that serializes the structure into a form amenable to suffix sorting and constructs a compressed suffix array (CSA) representation. The approach claims to support standard neighbor and incidence queries directly on the succinct structure. Experiments on real-world hypergraphs report compression ratios of 26% to 79% of the original file size (outperforming existing methods on all large instances), improved scalability to larger datasets, and neighbor query evaluation that is 6 to 40 times faster than both standard data structures and other hypergraph compressors.
Significance. If the central claims hold, the work would offer a practical succinct representation for hypergraphs that simultaneously reduces space and accelerates queries, which is valuable for applications involving large-scale co-authorship networks, social groups, and recommendation systems. Adapting suffix-array techniques from stringology to hypergraph incidence lists is a novel cross-domain idea, and the empirical results on real data provide concrete evidence of practicality. The absence of free parameters in the core construction (as implied by the method description) and the focus on query-preserving compression are strengths.
major comments (2)
- [§3 and §4] §3 (Construction) and §4 (Query Algorithms): The description of how the serialized hyperedge list is mapped to symbols for suffix sorting and how random-access neighbor queries are resolved inside the CSA is insufficiently detailed. Standard CSA constructions require the suffix array, inverse suffix array, and often LCP or sampled pointers; it is unclear whether these are stored in compressed form or if query resolution involves linear scans or auxiliary structures that would affect the reported space bounds and 6-40× speedup.
- [§5] §5 (Experimental Evaluation): The performance numbers (compression ratios, query times) are given without explicit specification of the exact baseline implementations, hypergraph dataset selection criteria, number of runs for timing, or error bars. This makes it difficult to assess whether the outperformance on large hypergraphs and the query speedup claims are robust.
minor comments (2)
- [Abstract] The abstract and introduction would benefit from a short paragraph clarifying the precise hypergraph representation (e.g., incidence list vs. edge list) assumed as input.
- [§2] Notation for the alphabet size and symbol mapping in the suffix array construction should be introduced earlier and used consistently.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for the positive assessment of the work's significance and for the constructive major comments. We address each point below and will incorporate clarifications to improve the manuscript.
read point-by-point responses
-
Referee: [§3 and §4] §3 (Construction) and §4 (Query Algorithms): The description of how the serialized hyperedge list is mapped to symbols for suffix sorting and how random-access neighbor queries are resolved inside the CSA is insufficiently detailed. Standard CSA constructions require the suffix array, inverse suffix array, and often LCP or sampled pointers; it is unclear whether these are stored in compressed form or if query resolution involves linear scans or auxiliary structures that would affect the reported space bounds and 6-40× speedup.
Authors: We appreciate the referee's request for greater precision. In the revised manuscript we will expand Sections 3 and 4 with an explicit description of the symbol alphabet construction from the serialized incidence lists and a step-by-step account of how neighbor and incidence queries are answered inside the CSA. We will state that the implementation follows a standard compressed suffix array (using compressed representations of the suffix array, inverse suffix array, and sampled LCP array via wavelet trees or equivalent structures) and that all random-access operations are performed with rank/select primitives in logarithmic time without linear scans or additional uncompressed auxiliary tables. These clarifications will confirm that the reported space bounds and query speedups remain unchanged. revision: yes
-
Referee: [§5] §5 (Experimental Evaluation): The performance numbers (compression ratios, query times) are given without explicit specification of the exact baseline implementations, hypergraph dataset selection criteria, number of runs for timing, or error bars. This makes it difficult to assess whether the outperformance on large hypergraphs and the query speedup claims are robust.
Authors: We agree that additional experimental details will strengthen reproducibility. In the revision we will add a dedicated paragraph specifying the exact baseline codebases and versions, the precise selection criteria and sources for each hypergraph dataset, the number of independent timing runs performed for each query measurement, and error bars (or standard deviations) on the reported query times. These additions will allow readers to better evaluate the robustness of the compression and speedup results. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No circularity: empirical claims rest on external real-world hypergraphs
full rationale
The paper presents HyperCSA as an algorithmic construction that serializes hyperedges for suffix-array compression while claiming direct support for neighbor and incidence queries. All reported compression ratios (26-79%), scalability, and 6-40x query speedups are measured against independent external datasets rather than quantities defined in terms of the method's own parameters or self-referential fits. No equation or claim reduces by construction to a prior input, self-citation chain, or renamed empirical pattern; the central representation and query support are presented as properties of the suffix-sorting construction evaluated on outside data.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (1)
- standard math Suffix sorting algorithms remain correct and efficient when applied to the chosen hypergraph encoding.
Lean theorems connected to this paper
-
IndisputableMonolith/Foundation/RealityFromDistinction.leanreality_from_one_distinction unclear?
unclearRelation between the paper passage and the cited Recognition theorem.
HyperCSA builds on Sadakane’s Compressed Suffix Array (CSA) [19] and is inspired by RDFCSA [1]. ... we adjust Ψ to ensure that repeated applications of Ψ cycles within the same edge e ∈ EG.
-
IndisputableMonolith/Cost/FunctionalEquation.leanwashburn_uniqueness_aczel unclear?
unclearRelation between the paper passage and the cited Recognition theorem.
Ψ can be stored in space proportional to the zero-order empirical entropy of T ... MG H0(T) + O(MG log(H0(T)))
What do these tags mean?
- matches
- The paper's claim is directly supported by a theorem in the formal canon.
- supports
- The theorem supports part of the paper's argument, but the paper may add assumptions or extra steps.
- extends
- The paper goes beyond the formal theorem; the theorem is a base layer rather than the whole result.
- uses
- The paper appears to rely on the theorem as machinery.
- contradicts
- The paper's claim conflicts with a theorem or certificate in the canon.
- unclear
- Pith found a possible connection, but the passage is too broad, indirect, or ambiguous to say the theorem truly supports the claim.
Reference graph
Works this paper leans on
-
[1]
In: 2016 Data Compression Conference, DCC 2016, Snow- bird, UT, USA, March 30 - April 1, 2016
Cerdeira-Pena, A., Fariña, A., Fernández, J.D., Martínez-Prieto, M.A.: Self- indexing RDF archives. In: 2016 Data Compression Conference, DCC 2016, Snow- bird, UT, USA, March 30 - April 1, 2016. pp. 526–535 (2016). https://doi.org/10. 1109/DCC.2016.40, https://doi.org/10.1109/DCC.2016.40
-
[2]
Chodrow, P.S., Veldt, N., Benson, A.R.: Hypergraph clustering: from blockmodels to modularity. Science Advances (2021)
work page 2021
-
[3]
Clark, D.: Compact PAT trees (1997)
work page 1997
-
[4]
Dai, Q., Gao, Y.: Mathematical Foundations of Hypergraph, pp. 19–40. Springer Nature Singapore, Singapore (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0185-2_ 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0185-2_2
-
[5]
IEEE Transactions on Mul- timedia 16(3), 796–812 (2014)
Fang, Q., Sang, J., Xu, C., Rui, Y.: Topic-sensitive influencer mining in interest- based social media networks via hypergraph learning. IEEE Transactions on Mul- timedia 16(3), 796–812 (2014)
work page 2014
-
[6]
Ferragina, P., Venturini, R.: The compressed permuterm index. ACM Trans. Algo- rithms 7(1), 10:1–10:21 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1145/1868237.1868248, https: //doi.org/10.1145/1868237.1868248
-
[7]
Random hypergraphs and their applications
Ghoshal, G., Zlatic, V., Caldarelli, G., Newman, M.E.J.: Random hypergraphs and their applications. CoRRabs/0903.0419 (2009), http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.0419
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv 2009
-
[8]
In: 13th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms, (SEA 2014)
Gog, S., Beller, T., Moffat, A., Petri, M.: From theory to practice: Plug and play with succinct data structures. In: 13th International Symposium on Experimental Algorithms, (SEA 2014). pp. 326–337 (2014)
work page 2014
-
[9]
https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1982.tb03439.x
Goldstein, A.J.: Database systems: A directed hypergraph database: A model for thelocallooptelephoneplant.TheBellSystemTechnicalJournal 61(9),2529–2554 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1982.tb03439.x
-
[10]
Hu, T., Xiong, H., Zhou, W., Sung, S.Y., Luo, H.: Hypergraph partitioning for document clustering: a unified clique perspective. In: Proceedings of the 31st Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval. p. 871–872. SIGIR ’08, Association for Computing Ma- chinery, New York, NY, USA (2008). https://doi.org/...
-
[11]
In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining
Huang, J., Zhang, R., Yu, J.X.: Scalable hypergraph learning and processing. In: 2015 IEEE International Conference on Data Mining. pp. 775–780 (2015). https: //doi.org/10.1109/ICDM.2015.33
-
[12]
In: 2008 Eighth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining
Hwang, T., Tian, Z., Kuangy, R., Kocher, J.P.: Learning on weighted hypergraphs to integrate protein interactions and gene expressions for cancer outcome predic- tion. In: 2008 Eighth IEEE International Conference on Data Mining. pp. 293–302 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDM.2008.37
-
[13]
In: 2018 IEEE High Performance extreme Computing Conference (HPEC)
Jenkins, L., Bhuiyan, T., Harun, S., Lightsey, C., Mentgen, D., Aksoy, S., Stavc- nger, T., Zalewski, M., Medal, H., Joslyn, C.: Chapel hypergraph library (chgl). In: 2018 IEEE High Performance extreme Computing Conference (HPEC). pp. 1–6 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/HPEC.2018.8547520
-
[14]
In: Proceedings of the Sixth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining
Li, L., Li, T.: News recommendation via hypergraph learning: encapsulation of user behavior and news content. In: Proceedings of the Sixth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining. p. 305–314. WSDM ’13, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (2013). https://doi.org/10.1145/ 2433396.2433436, https://doi.org/10.1145/2433396.2433436
-
[15]
Pattern Recognition 44(10), 2255–2262 (2011)
Liu, Q., Huang, Y., Metaxas, D.N.: Hypergraph with sampling for image retrieval. Pattern Recognition 44(10), 2255–2262 (2011). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/ 14 Adler et al. 10.1016/j.patcog.2010.07.014, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0031320310003535, semi-Supervised Learning for Visual Content Analysis and Understanding
-
[16]
Liu, Y., Luo, Q., Xiao, M., Yu, D., Chen, H., Cheng, X.: Reordering and compression for hypergraph processing. IEEE Trans. Computers 73(6), 1486– 1499 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2024.3377915, https://doi.org/10.1109/ TC.2024.3377915
-
[17]
Manber, U., Myers, G.: Suffix Arrays: A New Method for On-Line String Searches. In: Proceedings of the First Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algo- rithms, 22-24 January 1990, San Francisco, California, USA. pp. 319–327 (1990), http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=320176.320218
-
[18]
Mölder, F., Jablonski, K., Letcher, B., Hall, M., Tomkins-Tinch, C., Sochat, V., Forster, J., Lee, S., Twardziok, S., Kanitz, A., Wilm, A., Holtgrewe, M., Rahmann, S., Nahnsen, S., Köster, J.: Sustainable data analysis with snakemake [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. F1000Research10(33) (2021). https://doi.org/10.12688/ f1000research.29032.2
work page 2021
-
[19]
Sadakane, K.: New text indexing functionalities of the compressed suffix arrays. J. Algorithms 48(2), 294–313 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-6774(03)00087- 7, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-6774(03)00087-7
-
[20]
Schlag, S., Heuer, T., Gottesbüren, L., Akhremtsev, Y., Schulz, C., Sanders, P.: High-quality hypergraph partitioning. ACM J. Exp. Algorithmics27 (Feb 2023). https://doi.org/10.1145/3529090, https://doi.org/10.1145/3529090
-
[21]
Shun, J.: Practical parallel hypergraph algorithms. In: PPoPP ’20: 25th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming, San Diego, California, USA, February 22-26, 2020. pp. 232–249 (2020). https://doi. org/10.1145/3332466.3374527, https://doi.org/10.1145/3332466.3374527
-
[22]
In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM International Con- ference on Multimedia
Tan, H.K., Ngo, C.W., Wu, X.: Modeling video hyperlinks with hypergraph for web video reranking. In: Proceedings of the 16th ACM International Con- ference on Multimedia. p. 659–662. MM ’08, Association for Computing Ma- chinery, New York, NY, USA (2008). https://doi.org/10.1145/1459359.1459453, https://doi.org/10.1145/1459359.1459453
-
[23]
Tan, S., Bu, J., Chen, C., Xu, B., Wang, C., He, X.: Using rich social media infor- mation for music recommendation via hypergraph model. ACM Trans. Multime- dia Comput. Commun. Appl.7S(1) (Nov 2011). https://doi.org/10.1145/2037676. 2037679, https://doi.org/10.1145/2037676.2037679
-
[24]
In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Tan,S.,Guan,Z.,Cai,D.,Qin,X.,Bu,J.,Chen,C.:Mappingusersacrossnetworks by manifold alignment on hypergraph. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. vol. 28 (2014)
work page 2014
-
[25]
Veldt, N., Benson, A.R., Kleinberg, J.: Minimizing localized ratio cut objectives in hypergraphs. In: Proceedings of the 26th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining. ACM Press (2020)
work page 2020
-
[26]
Vigna, S.: Broadword implementation of rank/select queries. In: Experimental Al- gorithms, 7th International Workshop, WEA 2008, Provincetown, MA, USA, May 30-June 1, 2008, Proceedings. pp. 154–168 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3- 540-68552-4_12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68552-4_12
-
[27]
In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Mining Data Semantics
Yang, J., Leskovec, J.: Defining and evaluating network communities based on ground-truth. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Mining Data Semantics. MDS ’12, Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA (2012). https://doi.org/10.1145/2350190.2350193, https://doi.org/10.1145/ 2350190.2350193 Compressing Hypergraphs using Suffix Sortin...
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.