No Arabic abstract
In this paper, we formulate a top-k query that compares objects in a database to a user-provided query object on a novel scoring function. The proposed scoring function combines the idea of attractive and repulsive dimensions into a general framework to overcome the weakness of traditional distance or similarity measures. We study the properties of the proposed class of scoring functions and develop efficient and scalable index structures that index the isolines of the function. We demonstrate various scenarios where the query finds application. Empirical evaluation demonstrates a performance gain of one to two orders of magnitude on querying time over existing state-of-the-art top-k techniques. Further, a qualitative analysis is performed on a real dataset to highlight the potential of the proposed query in discovering hidden data characteristics.
We study here fundamental issues involved in top-k query evaluation in probabilistic databases. We consider simple probabilistic databases in which probabilities are associated with individual tuples, and general probabilistic databases in which, additionally, exclusivity relationships between tuples can be represented. In contrast to other recent research in this area, we do not limit ourselves to injective scoring functions. We formulate three intuitive postulates that the semantics of top-k queries in probabilistic databases should satisfy, and introduce a new semantics, Global-Topk, that satisfies those postulates to a large degree. We also show how to evaluate queries under the Global-Topk semantics. For simple databases we design dynamic-programming based algorithms, and for general databases we show polynomial-time reductions to the simple cases. For example, we demonstrate that for a fixed k the time complexity of top-k query evaluation is as low as linear, under the assumption that probabilistic databases are simple and scoring functions are injective.
We consider the task of enumerating and counting answers to $k$-ary conjunctive queries against relational databases that may be updated by inserting or deleting tuples. We exhibit a new notion of q-hierarchical conjunctive queries and show that these can be maintained efficiently in the following sense. During a linear time preprocessing phase, we can build a data structure that enables constant delay enumeration of the query results; and when the database is updated, we can update the data structure and restart the enumeration phase within constant time. For the special case of self-join free conjunctive queries we obtain a dichotomy: if a query is not q-hierarchical, then query enumeration with sublinear$^ast$ delay and sublinear update time (and arbitrary preprocessing time) is impossible. For answering Boolean conjunctive queries and for the more general problem of counting the number of solutions of k-ary queries we obtain complete dichotomies: if the querys homomorphic core is q-hierarchical, then size of the the query result can be computed in linear time and maintained with constant update time. Otherwise, the size of the query result cannot be maintained with sublinear update time. All our lower bounds rely on the OMv-conjecture, a conjecture on the hardness of online matrix-vector multiplication that has recently emerged in the field of fine-grained complexity to characterise the hardness of dynamic problems. The lower bound for the counting problem additionally relies on the orthogonal vectors conjecture, which in turn is implied by the strong exponential time hypothesis. $^ast)$ By sublinear we mean $O(n^{1-varepsilon})$ for some $varepsilon>0$, where $n$ is the size of the active domain of the current database.
We consider a class of queries called durability prediction queries that arise commonly in predictive analytics, where we use a given predictive model to answer questions about possible futures to inform our decisions. Examples of durability prediction queries include what is the probability that this financial product will keep losing money over the next 12 quarters before turning in any profit? and what is the chance for our proposed server cluster to fail the required service-level agreement before its term ends? We devise a general method called Multi-Level Splitting Sampling (MLSS) that can efficiently handle complex queries and complex models -- including those involving black-box functions -- as long as the models allow us to simulate possible futures step by step. Our method addresses the inefficiency of standard Monte Carlo (MC) methods by applying the idea of importance splitting to let one promising sample path prefix generate multiple offspring paths, thereby directing simulation efforts toward more promising paths. We propose practical techniques for designing splitting strategies, freeing users from manual tuning. Experiments show that our approach is able to achieve unbiased estimates and the same error guarantees as standard MC while offering an order-of-magnitude cost reduction.
With the prevalence of social media and GPS-enabled devices, a massive amount of geo-textual data has been generated in a stream fashion, leading to a variety of applications such as location-based recommendation and information dissemination. In this paper, we investigate a novel real-time top-k monitoring problem over sliding window of streaming data; that is, we continuously maintain the top-k most relevant geo-textual messages (e.g., geo-tagged tweets) for a large number of spatial-keyword subscriptions (e.g., registered users interested in local events) simultaneously. To provide the most recent information under controllable memory cost, sliding window model is employed on the streaming geo-textual data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to study top-k spatial-keyword publish/subscribe over sliding window. A novel centralized system, called Skype (Topk Spatial-keyword Publish/Subscribe), is proposed in this paper. In Skype, to continuously maintain top-k results for massive subscriptions, we devise a novel indexing structure upon subscriptions such that each incoming message can be immediately delivered on its arrival. To reduce the expensive top-k re-evaluation cost triggered by message expiration, we develop a novel cost-based k-skyband technique to reduce the number of re-evaluations in a cost-effective way. Extensive experiments verify the great efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed techniques. Furthermore, to support better scalability and higher throughput, we propose a distributed version of Skype, namely, DSkype, on top of Storm, which is a popular distributed stream processing system. With the help of fine-tuned subscription/message distribution mechanisms, DSkype can achieve orders of magnitude speed-up than its centralized version.
As data analytics becomes more crucial to digital systems, so grows the importance of characterizing the database queries that admit a more efficient evaluation. We consider the tractability yardstick of answer enumeration with a polylogarithmic delay after a linear-time preprocessing phase. Such an evaluation is obtained by constructing, in the preprocessing phase, a data structure that supports polylogarithmic-delay enumeration. In this paper, we seek a structure that supports the more demanding task of a random permutation: polylogarithmic-delay enumeration in truly random order. Enumeration of this kind is required if downstream applications assume that the intermediate results are representative of the whole result set in a statistically valuable manner. An even more demanding task is that of a random access: polylogarithmic-time retrieval of an answer whose position is given. We establish that the free-connex acyclic CQs are tractable in all three senses: enumeration, random-order enumeration, and random access; and in the absence of self-joins, it follows from past results that every other CQ is intractable by each of the three (under some fine-grained complexity assumptions). However, the three yardsticks are separated in the case of a union of CQs (UCQ): while a union of free-connex acyclic CQs has a tractable enumeration, it may (provably) admit no random access. For such UCQs we devise a random-order enumeration whose delay is logarithmic in expectation. We also identify a subclass of UCQs for which we can provide random access with polylogarithmic access time. Finally, we present an implementation and an empirical study that show a considerable practical superiority of our random-order enumeration approach over state-of-the-art alternatives.