Equivalent Disk Allocations

Declustering techniques reduce query response times through parallel I/O by distributing data among multiple devices. Except for a few cases, it is not possible to find declustering schemes that are optimal for all spatial range queries. As a result of this, most of the research on declustering have focused on finding schemes with low worst case additive error. Number-theoretic declustering techniques provide low additive error and high threshold. In this paper, we investigate equivalent disk allocations and focus on number-theoretic declustering. Most of the number-theoretic disk allocations are equivalent and provide the same additive error and threshold. Investigation of equivalent allocations simplifies schemes to find allocations with desirable properties. By keeping one of the equivalent disk allocations, we can reduce the complexity of searching for good disk allocations under various criteria such as additive error and threshold. Using proposed scheme, we were able to collect the most extensive experimental results on additive error and threshold in 2, 3, and 4 dimensions.