Algorithm Question

[Gabriel Genellina]

At Thursday 14/9/2006 20:31, Andrew McLean wrote:

>Now I want to issue a series of queries, such that when I combine all
>the data returned I have accessed all the records in the database.
>However, I want to minimise the total number of queries and also want to
>keep the number of records returned by more than one query small.

This is known as a "set cover" algorithm. You have a set of subsets, 
and want to determine the smallest set of those subsets, whose union 
is the universal set - (uh, what a mess!)

See "The Algorithm Design Manual" by Steven Skiena.
http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/files/set-cover.shtml
Full text (not-so-legal, I presume): 
http://www2.toki.or.id/book/AlgDesignManual/BOOK/BOOK/NODE4.HTM



Gabriel Genellina
Softlab SRL 


	
	
		
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