Need algorithm for fast storage and retrieval (search) of sets and subsets

Question

I need a way of storing sets of arbitrary size for fast query later on. I\'ll be needing to query the resulting data structure for subsets or sets that are already stored.

Answer 1

This problem is known in the literature as subset query. It is equivalent to the "partial match" problem (e.g.: find all words in a dictionary matching A??PL? where ? is a "don't care" character).

One of the earliest results in this area is from this paper by Ron Rivest from 19761. This2 is a more recent paper from 2002. Hopefully, this will be enough of a starting point to do a more in-depth literature search.

1. Rivest, Ronald L. "Partial-match retrieval algorithms." SIAM Journal on Computing 5.1 (1976): 19-50.

2. Charikar, Moses, Piotr Indyk, and Rina Panigrahy. "New algorithms for subset query, partial match, orthogonal range searching, and related problems." Automata, Languages and Programming. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2002. 451-462.