Definition
The Generalized Search Tree (GiST) is an extensible, disk-based index structure for large data sets, enabling the easy design and implementation of domain-specific index structures. The GiST provides a general-purpose implementation of many of the difficult systems issues inherent in indexing (data storage and access, search, concurrency and recovery), with a compact extensibility interface sufficient for the specification of the domain-specific, algorithmic aspects of indexing (clustering of data into pages, labeling of subtrees, and prioritization of the search frontier).
Historical Background
A key research challenge in database systems in the 1980s and 1990s was to support an extensible set of abstract data types, beyond the alphanumeric types typically used in business data processing. One critical component of database extensibility is the ability to easily add new access methodscustomized to specific data types and query operators. Ideally,...
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Hellerstein, J.M. (2016). Generalized Search Tree. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_743-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_743-2
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