An effective data clustering measure for temporal selection and projection queries

Abstract

Temporal databases (TDBs) allow users to record and retrieve time-varying data objects. Since TDBs usually manage a huge amount of underlying data objects, efficient disk accesses are essential for fast response time in temporal query processing. Data clustering is one of the most effective techniques that can improve performance of TDB systems. However, clustering measures for conventional data objects are not appropriate to temporal data objects because it is important to exploit temporal properties of underlying data objects and temporal queries as data clustering criteria. In this paper, we propose a data clustering measure called temporal affinity that can be used for effective temporal data clustering. The temporal affinity, which is based on the semantics of temporal operators, reflects the closeness among temporal data objects with respect to temporal query processing. We perform experiments to show the effectiveness of the proposed temporal data clustering measure. The experimental results indicate that a data clustering method based on the temporal affinity works better than other methods. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.