2013 Volume 67 Issue 1 Pages 117-127
Acyclic categories were introduced by Kozlov and can be viewed as generalized posets. Similar to posets, one can define their incidence algebras and a related topological complex. We consider the incidence algebra of either a poset or acyclic category as the quotient of a path algebra by the parallel ideal. We show that this ideal has a quadratic Gröbner basis with a lexicographic monomial order if and only if the poset or acyclic category is lexshellable.