K nearest neighbor queries and kNN-Joins in large relational databases (almost) for free

— Finding the k nearest neighbors (kNN) of a query point, or a set of query points (kNN-Join) are fundamental problems in many application domains. Many previous efforts to solve these problems focused on spatial databases or stand-alone systems, where changes to the database engine may be required, which may limit their application on large data sets that are stored in a relational database management system. Furthermore, these methods may not automatically optimize kNN queries or kNN-Joins when additional query conditions are specified. In this work, we study both the kNN query and the kNN-Join in a relational database, possibly augmented with additional query conditions. We search for relational algorithms that require no changes to the database engine. The straightforward solution uses the user-defined-function (UDF) that a query optimizer cannot optimize. We design algorithms that could be implemented by SQL operators without changes to the database engine, hence enabling the ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICDE
• Authors: Bin Yao, Feifei Li, Piyush Kumar
• Keywords: Additional Query Conditions, Database, Database Engine, ICDE 2010, Query Points