Spatial skyline queries: exact and approximation algorithms

Abstract

As more data-intensive applications emerge, advanced retrieval semantics, such as ranking and skylines, have attracted the attention of researchers. Geographic information systems are a good example of an application using a massive amount of spatial data. Our goal is to efficiently support exact and approximate skyline queries over massive spatial datasets. A spatial skyline query, consisting of multiple query points, retrieves data points that are not father than any other data points, from all query points. To achieve this goal, we present a simple and efficient algorithm that computes the correct results, also propose a fast approximation algorithm that returns a desirable subset of the skyline results. In addition, we propose a continuous query algorithm to trace changes of skyline points while a query point moves. To validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our algorithm, we provide an extensive empirical comparison between our algorithms and the best known spatial skyline algorithms from several perspectives.