A common technique for improving performance for database query retrieval is to decluster the database among multiple disks so that retrievals can be parallelized. In this paper we focus on answering range queries over a multidimensional database, where each of its dimensions are divided uniformly to obtain tiles which are placed on different disks; there has been a significant amount of research for determining how to place the records on disks to minimize the retrieval time. Recently, the idea of using replication (i.e., placing records on more than one disk) to improve performance has been introduced. When using replication there are two goals: i) to minimize the retrieval time and ii) to minimize the scheduling overhead it takes to determine which disk obtains a specific record when processing a query. The previously known replicated declustering schemes with low retrieval times are randomized; and one of the primary advantages of randomized schemes is that they balance the load...
Keith B. Frikken