Approximate Frequency Counts over Data Streams

We present algorithms for computing frequency counts exceeding a user-specified threshold over data streams. Our algorithms are simple and have provably small memory footprints. Although the output is approximate, the error is guaranteed not to exceed a user-specified parameter. Our algorithms can easily be deployed for streams of singleton items like those found in IP network monitoring. We can also handle streams of variable sized sets of items exemplified by a sequence of market basket transactions at a retail store. For such streams, we describe an optimized implementation to compute frequent itemsets in a single pass.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2002
• Where: VLDB
• Authors: Gurmeet Singh Manku, Rajeev Motwani
• Keywords: Algorithms, Database, Small Memory Footprints, User-specified Threshold, VLDB 2002