Branch-and-cut versus cut-and-branch algorithms for cell suppression

This paper discusses several techniques to apply Cell Suppression Methodology to protect private information when publishing tabular data. All techniques are exact algorithms to find optimal suppression patterns, but they can also be used as heuristic approaches to find good suppression patterns. One of the technique is the branch-and-cut algorithm described in Fischetti and Salazar (2000). A variant of this technique is presented in this paper with the name cut-and-branch algorithm. The paper discusses advantages and disadvantages of the cut-and-branch algorithm when compared to the branch-and-cut algorithm, and shows computational results on a set of real world instances. The computer implementation has been done using only free and open-source libraries. The paper concludes with an exact approach to apply Cell Suppression on tabular data where the response variable is discrete (like in a frequency table).