Distance join queries on spatial networks

The result of a distance join operation on two sets of objects R, S on a spatial network G is a set P of object pairs pq, p É R, q É S such that the distance of an object pair pq is the shortest distance from p to q in G. Several variations to the distance join operation such as UnOrdered, Incremental, topk, Semi-Join impose additional constraints on the distance between the object pairs in P, the ordering of object pairs in P, and on the cardinality of P. A distance join algorithm on spatial networks is proposed that works in conjunction with the SILC framework, which is a new approach to query processing on spatial networks. Experimental results demonstrate up to an order of magnitude speed up when compared with a prominent existing technique.