SP-GiST: An Extensible Database Index for Supporting Space Partitioning Trees

  • Authors:

  • Walid G. Aref;Ihab F. Ilyas

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1398, USA. aref@cs.purdue.edu;Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1398, USA. ilyas@cs.purdue.edu

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Intelligent Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Emerging database applications require the use of new indexing structures beyond B-trees and R-trees. Examples are the k-D tree, the trie, the quadtree, and their variants. They are often proposed as supporting structures in data mining, GIS, and CAD/CAM applications. A common feature of all these indexes is that they recursively divide the space into partitions. A new extensible index structure, termed SP-GiST is presented that supports this class of data structures, mainly the class of space partitioning unbalanced trees. Simple method implementations are provided that demonstrate how SP-GiST can behave as a k-D tree, a trie, a quadtree, or any of their variants. Issues related to clustering tree nodes into pages as well as concurrency control for SP-GiST are addressed. A dynamic minimum-height clustering technique is applied to minimize disk accesses and to make using such trees in database systems possible and efficient. A prototype implementation of SP-GiST is presented as well as performance studies of the various SP-GiST's tuning parameters.