Dealing with the NP-complete Dominating Set problem on undirected graphs, we demonstrate the power of data reduction by preprocessing from a theoretical as well as a practical side. In particular, we prove that Dominating Set restricted to planar graphs has a so-called problem kernel of linear size, achieved by two simple and easy to implement reduction rules. Moreover, having implemented our reduction rules, first experiments indicate the impressive practical potential of these rules. Thus, this work seems to open up a new and prospective way how to cope with one of the most important problems in graph theory and combinatorial optimization.
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