Caching support for skyline query processing with partially-ordered domains

Abstract

The results of skyline queries performed on data sets with partially-ordered domains vary depending on users' preference profiles specified for the partially-ordered domains. Existing work has addressed the issue of handling each individual query with some efficiency. However, processing large volumes of such queries for online applications with low response time is still very challenging. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach, termed CSS, to reduce the latency by caching query results with their unique user preferences. Of paramount importance in this case is that cached queries with compatible preference profiles need to be utilized. For this purpose, we introduce a similarity measure that establishes the level of a relation of a new query to each of the previously cached queries and profiles. The similarity measure allows the cached entries to be effectively ordered according to descending values; hence, query processing can start with the most promising candidates. If a new query is only partially answerable from the cache, the proposed method pursues a second optimization step. The query processor utilizes the partial result sets and augments them by performing less expensive constraint skyline queries guided by constraint violations between different query preference profiles. Extensive experiments are presented to demonstrate the performance and utility of our novel approach. © 2012 Authors.