The Nested Interpolation Based Grid File

Abstract

Spatial representation of objects, points or boxes or otherwise, plays an important role in new applications of databases. In this paper we introduce a new structure for physically organizing a set of multidimensional points. This structure called the Nested Interpolation-Based Grid File (NIBGF) represents a synthesis and an improvement of results obtained in Interpolation-Based Grid Files (IBGF), BANG files, and K-D-B-trees. The data search space is decomposed into uniquely identifiable regions which may either be disjoint as in Interpolation-Based Grid Files or enclose each other as in the BANG files. In addition to possessing the symmetry of access and clustering properties, the Nested Interpolation-Based Grid File achieves a B-tree performance as far as the index is concerned even in the worst case and the BANG file performance as far as the data regions are concerned. These properties make the new structure suited for the representation of arbitrary objects and for efficient implementation of relational database operations.