Efficient Skyline Query Processing on Peer-to-Peer Networks

Skyline query has been gaining much interest in database research communities in recent years. Most existing studies focus mainly on centralized systems, and resolving the problem in a distributed environment such as a peer-to-peer (P2P) network is still an emerging topic. The desiderata of efficient skyline querying in P2P environment include: 1) progressive returning of answers, 2) low processing cost in terms of number of peers accessed and search messages, 3) balanced query loads among the peers. In this paper, we propose a solution that satisfies the three desiderata. Our solution is based on a balanced tree structured P2P network. By partitioning the skyline search space adaptively based on query accessing patterns, we are able to alleviate the problem of "hot" spots present in the skyline query processing. By being able to estimate the peer nodes within the query subspaces, we are able to control the amount of query forwarding, limiting the number of peers involved and the amount of messages transmitted in the network. Load balancing is achieved in query load conscious data space splitting/merging during the joining/departure of nodes and through dynamic load migration. Experiments on real and synthetic datasets confirm the effectiveness and scalability of our algorithm on P2P networks.