Multidimensional Access Methods

for Point and Spatial Data

Ramakrishnan&Gehrke: Chap. 28.1-28.3

Various articles

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Single-Dimensional Indexes

B+ trees are fundamentally single-dimensional
indexes.

When we create a composite search key B+ tree,
e.g., an index on <age, sal>, we effectively linearize
the 2-dimensional space since we sort entries first
by age and then by sal. 80
70
60
Consider entries:
50
<11, 80>, <12, 10> 40 B+ tree
<12, 20>, <13, 75> 30 order
20
10
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 Multidimensional Queries

Multidimensional equality queries
– (e.g.) age = 50 AND sal = 70K

Multidimensional range queries
– 50 < age < 55 AND 80K < sal < 90K

Similarity queries (NN; content-based retrieval)
– Given a face, find the five most similar faces.

Spatial queries (GIS, CAD)
– Find all hotels within 5 miles from the conference venue.
– Find the city with population 500,000 or more that is
nearest to Kalamazoo, MI.
– Find all cities that lie on the Nile in Egypt.
– Find all parts that touch the fuselage (in a plane design).
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Desired Properties

A multidimensional index clusters entries so as to
exploit “nearness” in multidimensional space.

Symmetric: efficient access w.r.t. all indexed
attributes.

80
70
60
Consider entries:
50 Spatial
<11, 80>, <12, 10> 40 clusters
<12, 20>, <13, 75> 30
20
10
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 What’s the difficulty?

An index based on spatial location needed.

– Must support range queries as well as point queries.
– Must support inserts and deletes gracefully.

Need to support non-point data as well.
– (e.g.) lines, shapes, polygons, etc.

Numerous index structures have been proposed.
– Points: Grid file, k-d-B tree, hB-tree, etc.
– Spatial: R-tree and its variants (R+-, R*-, P-trees).

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K-d Tree [Bentley 1975]

Structurally, a binary tree.

Different (alternate) discriminator at each level.

Not necessarily balanced.

Efficient exact-matching, range queries.

But, main memory data structure.

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 Point Quad-tree [Finkel&Bentley 1974]

Essentially, multidimensional (binary) search tree.
– Fanout is 2d for a d-dimensional space.

Like k-d trees, decomposes the space by hyperplanes.

Searching is similar to binary search tree.
– At each level, all d key values are compared.

To insert a new data point, first perform a search
– then, insert the new data as a new leaf node,
– its corresponding partition is divided into 2d-way
subspaces.

Not necessarily balanced.

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Point quad-tree: example

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 Grid Files [Nievergelt 1984]

Dynamic version of multi-attribute hashing.

Superimpose a d-dimensional orthogonal grid.

The subspace represented by each grid cell
(bucket) may be of different shape and size.

Structure
– Scales (for x and y dimensions): stay in memory.
– Directory: mapping grid buckets to data blocks.
– Each bucket corresponds to a disk block. But adjacent
buckets can share the same disk block.

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Grid Files (contd)

For any exact-match query, only 2 disk accesses.
– One for directory, and the other for a data block.

Symmetric structure w.r.t. the index attributes
allows efficient range queries w.r.t. all attributes.

Adapts to non-uniform data distributions.
– More cuts in scales in the dense data regions.
– Typically cuts occur on pre-defined points in scales.

If an insertion causes overflow in a data block,
– If the block is associated with several buckets, split.
– O/W, introduce a new split on a scale; Very expensive.

How about deletion?
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 Grid File: example

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Grid File: disadvantages

Split and Merge are quite complicated.

If attributes are correlated, large directory and
many empty buckets; A variant: Rotated grid file.

The most serious problem with grid files is the
size of directory.
– Directory grows faster than linear even for uniformly
distributed data set: O(n1+(d-1)/(dB+1)) [Regnier 1984].
– The Curse of Dimensionality!!

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 k-d-B tree [Robinson 1981]

Combines (adaptive) k-d tree and B-tree.

Dynamic, multi-way, balanced, fixed-size page.

Unlike B-tree, 50% utilization is not guaranteed.

Node structures
– Internal node: a collection of <d-region, node pointer>.
– Leaf node: <d-point, data pointer>.

Space decomposition
– Space decomposed in a manner similar to k-d tree.
– Subspaces at the same level are mutually disjoint (no
overlap).
– Union of subspaces constitutes the complete space of their
parent.
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k-d-B tree: example

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 k-d-B tree: Insertion

If a leaf node overflows, it is split; about half the

entries are shifted to the new leaf node.
– Various heuristics for optimal split.

Like B-tree, the split may be propagated up the tree.
– However, unlike B-tree, split of an internal node may
affect the space decomposition of its child nodes.
– The hyperplane used for the new split will split all the
descendant nodes as well. Cascading splits!!
– So, impossible to guarantee minimum storage utilization.

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hB-tree [Lomet&Salzberg 1989]

A variant of the k-d-B tree.

Unlike k-d-B tree, split may be done by more than
one hyperplane, allowing L-shaped subspaces.

Structure
– Each node is a k-d tree, which represents a L-shaped or brick
with holes (holey brick).
– The leaves of the k-d tree point to the lower-level nodes.
– More than one pointer can reference the same node.

Split guarantees 1:2 data distribution in the worst
case.

Splits are localized; avoid cascading splits.
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 hB-tree: example

The node u represents an L-shaped subspace
A+B+E+G. G in turn represents an L-shaped.

w u

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Summary: Point Data

Data objects are points in a multidimensional space.

Popular queries are
– Exact-match (point) query,
– Range (including partial-match) query,
– Nearest-neighbor query.

K-d trees and quad-trees are main memory indexes.

Grid file, k-d-B tree, hB-tree are for point data.
– Grid file: superlinear directory growth.
– K-d-B tree: cascading splits.
– hB-tree: 33% guaranteed utilization, duplicate references.

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 The R-Tree [Guttman 1984]

Like B-tree, R-tree remains balanced on inserts

and deletes, and guarantees 50% storage
utilization.

Each key is a minimum bounding rectangle
(MBR). Root of

Example in 2-D: R Tree

Y Leaf
X level
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Example: 2-D View

Leaf entry
Index entry
R1 R4
R11 Spatial object
R3 R5 R13
R9 approximated by
R8 bounding box R8
R14
R10

R12
R7
R18
R6 R17
R16
R19

R15 R2

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 Example: Tree Structure
R1 R2

R3 R4 R5 R6 R7

R8 R9 R10 R11 R12 R13 R14 R15 R16 R17 R18 R19

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R-Tree Properties

Internal node: a set of pairs <d-MBR, node pointer>
– An MBR covers all the MBRs in subtree.

Leaf node: a set of pairs <d-MBR, data pointer>
– MBR is the tightest bounding box for a data object.

Nodes can be kept 50% full (except root).
– Root node has at least two entries.
– Each node except root contains between m and M entries.
The 50% utilization can be achieved by properly setting
m.

MBRs (even at the same level) are allowed to overlap.
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 Intersection (or Range) Query

Start at root.
1. If current node is non-leaf, for each
entry <E, ptr>, if box E overlaps Q,
search subtree identified by ptr.
2. If current node is leaf, for each entry
<E, rid>, if E overlaps Q, rid identifies
an object that might overlap Q.

Note: May have to search several subtrees at each node!

(In contrast, a B-tree equality search goes to just one leaf.)

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Inserting an Entry <MBR, ptr>

Algorithm ChooseLeaf
– Start at root and go down to best-fit leaf node L.
– At each level, choose one among nodes whose MBR needs least
enlargement to cover the MBR of the new object.
– Tie-breaking by going to a child node with smallest area.

Algorithm SplitNode
– If best-fit leaf L is already full, split L into L1 and L2.

Algorithm AdjustTree
– Adjust the MBR of L (or L1) in its parent while ascending to the root.
– If L is split, add an entry for L2 to its parent. (This could cause the
parent node to recursively split.)

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 Splitting a Node During Insertion

The entries in node L plus the newly inserted entry must
be distributed between L1 and L2.

Goal is to reduce likelihood of both L1 and L2 being
searched on subsequent queries.

Two alternative goals to avoid multiple paths from the
root and to prune the search space:
• Minimize coverage (area)
• Minimize overlap

GOOD SPLIT!
BAD!
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Guttman’s Split Algorithm

Exhaustive : O(2M) to try all possible groupings.

Quadratic : O(M2*d)
– First, find a pair (R,S) that maximizes
area(MBR(R,S)) - area(MBR(R) ∪ MBR(S)).
– For the rest of entries,
1) Choose an entry E such that |δ δR – δS| is maximal, where δx is the
area increase required in GroupR or GroupS to include the entry E.
2) Add E to a group so that coverage will be enlarged by the least
amount. Tie-breaking by adding to a group with smaller area,
then with fewer entries.
3) Repeat this until all the entries are assigned to groups.

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 Guttman’s Split Algorithm

Linear : O(M*d)
– First, find a pair (R,S) for each dimension that maximizes
disti(R, S). Then, pick one among the d pairs with the
maximum normalized distance.
 disti(R,S) is the distance between R and S along i-axis.
 Normalized distance is disti(R,S) / max_distancei.
– Then, add entries to groups so that coverage will be
enlarged by the least amount.

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Deleting an Entry

Deletion consists of searching for the entry to be

deleted, removing it.

If the node becomes underflow (i.e., contains less
then the minimum entries), re-insert the
remaining entries.

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 R*-tree [Beckmann et al. 1990]

Major insight : node splitting is critical for performance.

Basically, a set of optimizing techniques for R-tree.

Algorithm ChooseSubtree
– If the current node is a leaf, done.
– If the current node is a parent of leaf nodes, use minimum overlap
enlargement for selecting a leaf node, with tie-breaking by least area
enlargement then smallest area. Complexity is O(M2). An O(MlogM)
approximate algorithm was suggested.
– If the current node is a parent of internal nodes, use minimum area
enlargement for selecting an internal node, with tie-breaking by
smallest area. [Same as Guttman’s ChooseLeaf algorithm]

Split algorithm that considers area, margin and overlap.
– Based on plane-sweeping paradigm; O(d*MlogM).

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R*-tree : Deferred Splitting

Algorithm Reinsert: a new idea Deferred Splitting

– Dynamic reorganization by forced-reinsert; at the first
time overflow at any level, reinsert p out of M+1
entries.
– The p entries whose centers are farthest from the
center of the enclosing MBR are chosen for reinsertion.
– Significant performance improvement for point data
sets.

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 R*-tree : Node Splitting

Node splitting based on Plane-Sweeping:
(1) Sort MBR’s by xlow coordinates (for each dimension).
(2) Generate (M-2m+2) 2-way partitions:
k=1: m M-m+1
k=2: m+1 M-m
…..
k=M-2m+2: M-m+1 m
(3) For each dimension i, compute Si = ∑margink, where margink is the
sum of perimeters of two MBR’s (by each 2-way partitioning).
(4) Choose a dimension j, such that Sj is minimal.
(5) For the dimension j, select one out of (M-2m+2) 2-way partitions
such that overlap is minimized. Tie-break by the minimum area.

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R*-tree : Performance Evaluation

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 Summary on R-Trees

Overall, works quite well for low dimensional (d < 10)
data sets; widely used.

Other variants:
– P-tree [Jagadish 1990]: use a convex polygon for MBR.
– SR-tree [Katayama 1997]: use a spherical bounding region.
– X-tree [Berchtold 1996]: proposed for high dimensional data sets.
– Parallel R-tree [Kamel&Faloutsos 1992]: for multi-disk systems.
– Hilbert R-tree [Kamel&Faloutsos 1994]: use the Hilbert space-
filling curve for deferred splitting.
– Packed R-tree [Rous. 1985; Kamel 1993]: to bulk-load static data.

Still, one of the hottest research tools!!!

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Space-filling Curves: background

Historical background:
– [Peano 1890]: showed there exists a continuous and
surjective mapping, f: [0,1] ⇒ [0,2]2.
– [Hilbert 1891]: demonstrated its existence by a
geometric construction.

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 Space-filling Curves for
Multidimensional Indexing

Main difficulty in multidimensional indexing:
– No total order that preserves spatial proximity.
– If total order found, then one-dimensional access methods can be
used.
 UB-Tree (Universal B-Tree): z-ordering with a variant of B+-Tree

Linear Mapping by a Space-Filling Curve
– First, partition the m-D space with a grid.
– Map the coordinates of each grid cell into a unique number by an
SFC.
– A spatial object is represented by a list of grid cells intersected.
– The way of mapping determines how closely adjacent cells (or
data in the cells) are stored in an index, or a file on disk. [data
clustering]

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Z-Curve by Bit-Interleaving

Popular curves are:

– Z-curve (aka, Morton curve), Hilbert, Gray-coded.

Z-curve (aka Morton curve)
– Easy to implement, adopted by commercial DBMS.
– A single common prefix can be used to represent a set
of grid cells. [If z1 is the prefix of z2, then the region of z1
encloses that of z2.]
– Clustering not as good as Hilbert curve.

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 Z-curve for spatial objects: example

Nine regions
approximate the
polygon:
– {011100,011110,110100,01
001*,0110**,1100**,000111
,001***,10010*}

01001*=010010+010011

0110**=011000+011001+
011010+011011

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Data Clustering by SFC

SFC preserves data locality while mapping.

Cluster is a set of consecutive grid points.

A 2x2 range query below retrieves 4 grid points in
two clusters, which may amount to two disk seeks.

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 Clustering Properties of SFC

Comparative studies show SFCs have different clustering

properties.
 [Jagadish 1990] For a 2x2 range query, the avg number of clusters is
2.65 (z-curve), 2.5 (Gray-coded), 2.0 (Hilbert curve).
 [Rong 1991] For a 2-d rectangular query, the avg number of clusters
by z-curve is (perimeter + 2*one-side)/3.
 [Moon 1996] For a d-dimensional query region of any rectilinear
polyhedron, the avg number of clusters by Hilbert curve is Sq/2d,
where Sq is the hyper-surface area of the query.
 For a 2-d rectangular query, the avg number of clusters by
Hilbert curve is perimeter/4.

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