Signature file hierarchies and signature graphs

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new index structure for object-oriented databases. The main idea of this is a graph structure, called a signature graph, which is constructed over a signature file generated for a class and improves the search of a signature file dramatically. In addition, the signature files (accordingly, the signature graphs) can be organized into a hierarchy according to the nested structure (called the aggregation hierarchy) of classes in an object-oriented database, which leads to another significant improvements.