Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Querying Large Databases, Nathan Beneke

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

This paper investigates two approaches to improving query times on large relational databases. The first technique capitalizes on the knowledge of a database's structures and properties one typically has. This technique can execute some queries exactly in a constant, bounded amount of time. When this technique cannot be used to exactly execute a query we show how it can still be used to drastically lower the run-time on the query while getting a good approximation of the exact result. We also discuss the complexity of deciding whether a query is evaluable in this way, both theoretically and practically. The second …