A hybrid index structure for geo-textual searches
Richard W. Gobel, Andreas Henrich, Raik Niemann, Daniel Blank · 2009
The efficient execution of multi-criteria queries has gained increasing interest over the last years. In the present paper we propose an R-tree based approach for queries addressing textual as well as geographic filter conditions. Whereas most previous approaches use an index structure optimised for a single criterion adding special treatment for the other criterion at the leaf nodes or end points of this index structure, our approach uses a deeper integration. In short, R-trees are maintained for certain subsets of the whole term set. Furthermore, in each of these R-trees bit sets are used within the nodes to indicate whether entries for the terms associated with the single bits can be found in the corresponding sub-tree. Our index structure aims to be both, time and space efficient. The paper investigates the efficiency and applicability of the proposed index structure via practical experiments based on real-world and synthetic data.