提出NS3框架,高效解决多变量逻辑查询的联合排序难题。
Neural Scalable Symbolic Search Framework for Complex Logical Queries with Multiple Free Variables

- 将多变量查询转化为动态预算下的超节点搜索,避免穷举所有组合。
- 在三个标准数据集上显著提升联合排序性能,同时保持单变量精度。
- 首次构建支持k=3的联合排序基准,推动复杂查询评估发展。
复杂查询回答(CQA)是知识图谱(KG)中不完整信息上的核心知识表示与推理任务。回答含k个自由变量的存在性一阶查询(即EFO_k查询)是关键但极具挑战的问题,需对实体集合\mathcal{E}^k中的答案元组进行联合排序,而该问题随k增长迅速变得不可行。现有方法依赖于单变量边际排序,但其无法准确反映真实联合排名。本文基于神经符号搜索思想,提出神经可扩展符号搜索(NS3)框架,通过预算控制方式近似联合排序而不枚举\mathcal{E}^k。NS3(i)先回答边际子查询以获取候选集,(ii)将多个自由变量合并为超节点,其域由动态预算B剪枝并控制,(iii)逐步将EFO_k查询简化为在预算化缩减域上的EFO_{k-1}查询。在三个标准知识图谱数据集上,NS3显著提升联合排序表现,同时维持强边际准确率。此外,我们发布了一个新的联合排序基准,将现有EFO_1数据集扩展至k=3,实现对多变量查询的系统性评估。代码已开源:https://github.com/HKUST-KnowComp/NS3_KDD2026。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Complex Query Answering (CQA) is a fundamental knowledge representation and reasoning task over incomplete knowledge graphs (KGs). Answering existential first-order queries with $k$ free variables (i.e., $\text{EFO}_k$ queries) is a crucial yet challenging problem, as it requires ranking answer tuples in $\mathcal{E}^k$, where $\mathcal{E}$ denotes the entity set of a KG. This quickly becomes intractable as $k$ grows. Consequently, existing benchmarks and methods rely on marginal rankings over individual variables; however, marginal rankings are a poor proxy for the true joint ranking of tuples. Building on neural symbolic search for $\text{EFO}_1$ queries, we propose Neural Scalable Symbolic Search (NS3), a budgeted framework that approximates joint ranking without enumerating $\mathcal{E}^k$. NS3 (i) answers marginalized sub-queries to obtain necessary candidate sets, (ii) merges multiple free variables into hypernodes whose domains are pruned and controlled by a dynamic budget $B$, and (iii) progressively reduces an $\text{EFO}_k$ query to an $\text{EFO}_{k-1}$ query over a budgeted reduced domain. Across three standard KG datasets, NS3 substantially improves joint ranking performance while retaining strong marginal accuracy. We further release a joint-ranking benchmark that extends existing $\text{EFO}_1$ datasets to $k=3$, enabling systematic evaluation of multi-variable queries. Our code is provided in https://github.com/HKUST-KnowComp/NS3_KDD2026.
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