Similarity Search

The proliferation of information housed in computerized domains makes it vital to find tools to search these resources efficiently and effectively. Ordinary retrieval techniques are inadequate because sorting is simply impossible. Consequently, proximity searching has become a fundamental computation task in a variety of application areas.§Similarity Search focuses on the state of the art in developing index structures for searching the metric space. Part I of the text describes major theoretical principles, and provides an extensive survey of specific techniques for a large range of applications. Part II concentrates on approaches particularly designed for searching in large collections of data. After describing the most popular centralized disk-based metric indexes, approximation techniques are presented as a way to significantly speed up search time at the cost of some imprecision in query results. Finally, the scalable and distributed metric structures are discussed.In the Information Society, information holds the master key to economic influence. Similarity Search: The Metric Space Approach will focus on efficient ways to locate user-relevant information in collections of objects, the similarity of which is quantified using a pairwise distance measure. This book is a direct response to recent advances in computing, communications and storage which have led to the current flood of digital libraries, data warehouses and the limitless heterogeneity of internet resources. §Similarity Search: The Metric Space Approach will introduce state-of-the-art in developing index structures for searching complex data modeled as instances of a metric space. This book consists of two parts. Part 1 presents the metric search approach in a nutshell by defining the problem, describes major theoretical principals, and provides an extensive survey of specific techniques for a large range of applications. Part 2 concentrates on approaches particularly designed for searching in very large collections of data.§Similarity Search: The Metric Space Approach is designed for a professional audience, composed of academic researchers as well as practitioners in industry. This book is also suitable as introductory material for graduate-level students in computer science.