Summary: SPACE PARTITIONING AND ITS APPLICATION
TO GENERALIZED RETRIEVAL PROBLEMS
David Avis
School of Computer Science
McGill University
805 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2K6
1. Introduction
A fundamental problem in the area of database systems is the retrieval of data satis­
fying certain criteria. The simplest such problem is the retrieval of data based on a single
key, and a comprehensive treatment of this problem is contained in Knuth[10]. A more
difficult problem is the retrieval of data based on criteria for several keys, the so­called
multidimensional search problem. Suppose that each of n records of a file contains a
fixed number, d , of keys. A query asks for all records for which the d keys satisfy certain
criteria. For example, upper and lower bounds maybe specified for some or all keys,
yielding the so­called orthogonal range query problem.
In this paper we study the multidimensional search problem from a geometric stand­
point. We consider the d - tuple of keys for a given record as a point in d­dimensional
space, R d . The previously mentioned orthogonal range query problem can now be inter­
preted as finding all points in a given d - dimensional hyperrectangle. Suppose we are

Source: Avis, David - School of Computer Science, McGill University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences