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Path-Reporting Distance Oracles for Vertex-Labeled Graphs

Authors: Ofer Neiman and Alon Spector

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 370, 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)


Abstract
Let G = (V,E) be a weighted undirected graph, with n vertices. A distance oracle is a data structure that can quickly answer distance queries, with some stretch factor. A seminal work of [Thorup and Zwick, 2005], given an integer k ≥ 1, provides such an oracle with stretch 2k-1, query time O(k), and size O(k⋅ n^{1+1/k}). Furthermore, this oracle can also report a path in G corresponding to the returned distance. In this paper we focus on vertex-labeled graphs, in which each vertex is given a label from a set L of size 𝓁. A vertex-label distance oracle answers queries of the form (v,λ), where v ∈ V and λ ∈ L, by reporting (an approximation to) the distance from v to the closest vertex of label λ. Following [Danny Hermelin et al., 2011], it was shown in [Chechik, 2012] that for any integer k > 1, there exists a vertex-label distance oracle with stretch 4k-5, query time O(k), and size O(k⋅ n⋅ 𝓁^{1/k}). This state-of-the-art result suffers from two main drawbacks: The stretch is roughly a factor of 2 larger than in [Thorup and Zwick, 2005], and it is not path-reporting. We address these concerns in this work, and provide the following results. - First, we devise a path-reporting vertex-label distance oracle, at the cost of a slight increase in stretch and size. For any constant 0 < ε < 1, our oracle has stretch (4k-5)⋅(1+ε), query time O(k), and size O(n^{1+o(1)}⋅ 𝓁^{1/k}). - Second, we show how to improve the stretch to the optimal 2k-1, at the cost of mildly increasing the query time. Specifically, we devise a vertex-label distance oracle with stretch 2k-1, query time O(𝓁^{1/k}⋅log n), and size O(k⋅ n⋅ 𝓁^{1/k}).

Cite as

Ofer Neiman and Alon Spector. Path-Reporting Distance Oracles for Vertex-Labeled Graphs. In 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 370, pp. 35:1-35:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{neiman_et_al:LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.35,
  author =	{Neiman, Ofer and Spector, Alon},
  title =	{{Path-Reporting Distance Oracles for Vertex-Labeled Graphs}},
  booktitle =	{20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)},
  pages =	{35:1--35:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-421-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{370},
  editor =	{Fraigniaud, Pierre},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.35},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260719},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.35},
  annote =	{Keywords: Graph Algorithms, Shortest Paths, Distance Oracles}
}
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