We present a theoretical study of a problem arising in database query optimization, which we call as The Common Prefix Problem. We present a (1−o(1)) factor approximation algorithm for this problem, when the underlying graph is a binary tree. We then use a result of Feige and Kogan to show that even on stars, the problem is hard to approximate.
@article{arxiv.cs/0612060,
title = {The Common Prefix Problem On Trees},
author = {Sreyash Kenkre and Sundar Vishwanathan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0612060},
year = {2007}
}