The skyline of a set of d-dimensional points contains the points that are not dominated by any other point on all dimensions. Skyline computation has recently received considerable attention in the database community, especially for progressive (or online) algorithms that can quickly return the first skyline points without having to read the entire data file. Currently, the most efficient algorithm is NN (nearest neighbors), which applies the divideand -conquer framework on datasets indexed by R-trees. Although NN has some desirable features (such as high speed for returning the initial skyline points, applicability to arbitrary data distributions and dimensions), it also presents several inherent disadvantages (need for duplicate elimination if d>2, multiple accesses of the same node, large space overhead). In this paper we develop BBS (branch-and-bound skyline), a progressive algorithm also based on nearest neighbor search, which is IO optimal, i.e., it performs a single access only to those R-tree nodes that may contain skyline points. Furthermore, it does not retrieve duplicates and its space overhead is significantly smaller than that of NN. Finally, BBS is simple to implement and can be efficiently applied to a variety of alternative skyline queries. An analytical and experimental comparison shows that BBS outperforms NN (usually by orders of magnitude) under all problem instances.

Similarity search is a very important operation in multimedia databases and other database applications involving complex objects, and involves finding objects in a data set S similar to a query object q, based on some similarity measure. In this article, we focus on methods for similarity search that make the general assumption that similarity is represented with a distance metric d. Existing methods for handling similarity search in this setting typically fall into one of two classes. The first directly indexes the objects based on distances (distance-based indexing), while the second is based on mapping to a vector space (mapping-based approach). The main part of this article is dedicated to a survey of distance-based indexing methods, but we also briefly outline how search occurs in mapping-based methods. We also present a general framework for performing search based on distances, and present algorithms for common types of queries that operate on an arbitrary “search hierarchy. ” These algorithms can be applied on each of the methods presented, provided a suitable search hierarchy is defined.

The skyline of a d-dimensional dataset contains the points that are not dominated by any other point on all dimensions. Skyline computation has recently received considerable attention in the database community, especially for progressive methods that can quickly return the initial results without reading the entire database. All the existing algorithms, however, have some serious shortcomings which limit their applicability in practice. In this article we develop branch-andbound skyline (BBS), an algorithm based on nearest-neighbor search, which is I/O optimal, that is, it performs a single access only to those nodes that may contain skyline points. BBS is simple to implement and supports all types of progressive processing (e.g., user preferences, arbitrary dimensionality, etc). Furthermore, we propose several interesting variations of skyline computation, and show how BBS can be applied for their efficient processing.

A continuous nearest neighbor query retrieves the nearest neighbor (NN) of every point on a line segment (e.g., "find all my nearest gas stations during my route from point s to point e"). The result contains a set of <point, interval> tuples, such that point is the NN of all points in the corresponding interval. Existing methods for continuous nearest neighbor search are based on the repetitive application of simple NN algorithms, which incurs significant overhead. In this paper we propose techniques that solve the problem by performing a single query for the whole input segment. As a result the cost, depending on the query and dataset characteristics, may drop by orders of magnitude.

With the proliferation of wireless communications and the rapid advances in technologies for tracking the positions of continuously moving objects, algorithms for efficiently answering queries about large numbers of moving objects increasingly are needed. One such query is the reverse nearest neighbor (RNN) query that returns the objects that have a query object as their closest object. While algorithms have been proposed that compute RNN queries for non-moving objects, there have been no proposals for answering RNN queries for continuously moving objects. Another such query is the nearest neighbor (NN) query, which has been studied extensively and in many contexts. Like the RNN query, the NN query has not been explored for moving query and data points. This paper proposes an algorithm for answering RNN queries for continuously moving points in the plane. As a part of the solution to this problem and as a separate contribution, an algorithm for answering NN queries for continuously moving points is also proposed. The results of performance experiments are reported.

This paper introduces the Scalable INcremental hash-based Algorithm (SINA, for short); a new algorithm for evaluating a set of concurrent continuous spatio-temporal queries. SINA is designed with two goals in mind: (1) Scalability in terms of the number of concurrent continuous spatiotemporal queries, and (2) Incremental evaluation of continuous spatio-temporal queries. SINA achieves scalability by employing a shared execution paradigm where the execution of continuous spatio-temporal queries is abstracted as a spatial join between a set of moving objects and a set of moving queries. Incremental evaluation is achieved by computing only the updates of the previously reported answer. We introduce two types of updates, namely positive and negative updates. Positive or negative updates indicate that a certain object should be added to or removed from the previously reported answer, respectively. SINA manages the computation of positive and negative updates via three phases: the hashing phase, the invalidation phase, and the joining phase. The hashing phase employs an in-memory hash-based join algorithm that results in a set of positive updates. The invalidation phase is triggered every T seconds or when the memory is fully occupied to produce a set of negative updates. Finally, the joining phase is triggered by the end of the invalidation phase to produce a set of both positive and negative updates that result from joining in-memory data with in-disk data. Experimental results show that SINA is scalable and is more e#cient than other index-based spatio-temporal algorithms.

Inherent in the operation of many decision support and continuous referral systems is the notion of the "influence" of a data point on the database. This notion arises in examples such as finding the set of customers affected by the opening of a new store outlet location, notifying the subset of subscribers to a digital library who will find a newly added document most relevant, etc. Standard approaches to determining the influence set of a data point involve range searching and nearest neighbor queries. In this paper, we formalize a novel notion of influence based on reverse neighbor queries and its variants. Since the nearest neighbor relation is not symmetric, the set of points that are closest to a query point (i.e., the nearest neighbors) differs from the set of points that have the query point as their nearest neighbor (called the reverse nearest neighbors). Influence sets based on reverse nearest neighbor (RNN) queries seem to capture the intuitive notion of influence from our ...

Top-k queries based on ranking elements of multidimensional datasets are a fundamental building block for many kinds of information discovery. The best known general-purpose algorithm for evaluating top-k queries is Fagin’s threshold algorithm (TA). Since the user’s goal behind top-k queries is to identify one or a few relevant and novel data items, it is intriguing to use approximate variants of TA to reduce run-time costs. This paper introduces a family of approximate top-k algorithms based on probabilistic arguments. When scanning index lists of the underlying multidimensional data space in descending order of local scores, various forms of convolution and derived bounds are employed to predict when it is safe, with high probability, to drop candidate items and to prune the index scans. The precision and the efficiency of the developed methods are experimentally evaluated based on a large Web corpus and a structured data collection.

Complex data types—such as images, documents, DNA sequences, etc.—are becoming increasingly important in modern database applications. A typical query in many of these applications seeks to find objects that are similar to some target object, where (dis)similarity is defined by some distance function. Often, the cost of evaluating the distance between two objects is very high. Thus, the number of distance evaluations should be kept at a minimum, while (ideally) maintaining the quality of the result. One way to approach this goal is to embed the data objects in a vector space so that the distances of the embedded objects approximates the actual distances. Thus, queries can be performed (for the most part) on the embedded objects. In this paper, we are especially interested in examining the issue of whether or not the embedding methods will ensure that no relevant objects are left out (i.e., there are no false dismissals and, hence, the correct result is reported). Particular attention is paid to the SparseMap, FastMap, and MetricMap embedding methods. SparseMap is a variant of Lipschitz embeddings, while FastMap and MetricMap are inspired by dimension reduction methods for Euclidean spaces (using KLT or the related PCA and SVD). We show that, in general, none of these embedding methods guarantee that queries on the embedded objects have no false dismissals, while also demonstrating the limited cases in which the guarantee does hold. Moreover, we describe a variant of SparseMap that allows queries with no false dismissals. In addition, we show that with FastMap and MetricMap, the distances of the embedded objects can be much greater than the actual distances. This makes it impossible (or at least impractical) to modify FastMap and MetricMap to guarantee no false dismissals.

This paper proposes a generic framework for monitoring continuous spatial queries over moving objects. The framework distinguishes itself from existing work by being the first to address the location update issue and to provide a common interface for monitoring mixed types of queries. Based on the notion of safe region, the client location update strategy is developed based on the queries being monitored. Thus, it significantly reduces the wireless communication and query reevaluation costs required to maintain the upto-date query results. We propose algorithms for query evaluation/reevaluation and for safe region computation in this framework. Enhancements are also proposed to take advantage of two practical mobility assumptions: maximum speed and steady movement. The experimental results show that our framework substantially outperforms the traditional periodic monitoring scheme in terms of monitoring accuracy and CPU time while achieving a close-to-optimal wireless communication cost. The framework also can scale up to a large monitoring system and is robust under various object mobility patterns. 1.