Unit 2-Lecture6: Directed Acyclic Graphs & Scheduling

1 DAG

Definition: A directed acyclic graph (DAG) is a directed graph with no cycles.

2 Scheduling

2.1 Topological Sort

• A topological sort of a finite DAG is a list of all the vertices such that each vertex v appears earlier in the list than every other vertex reachable from v.
• For task dependencies, topological sorting provides a way to execute tasks one after another while respecting those dependencies.

2.2 minimal and minimum

An vertex v of a DAG, D, is minimum iff every other vertex is reachable from v. A vertex v is minimal iff v is not reachable from any other vertex.

• These words come from the perspective that a vertex is “smaller” than any other vertex it connects to.
• Every finite DAG has a topological sort.