Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

Talk by Jason Sawin, University of Puget Sound

Compressing Bitmap Indices: How to make 1s and 0s smaller
Mon, February 27, 2012
SCI 240, 4:30 pm (cookies at 4:15)

Abstract

Applications that monitor the stock market, record weather information, and perform scientific simulations generate staggering amounts of data. The databases that store this information generally contain a large number of records, high dimensions of numerical attributes, and are typically read-only. These traits mean that such databases are ideally suited for bitmap indices. Bitmap indices provide a coarse representation of the data stored in the database and can greatly increase the speed at which information is retrieved.

Jason will be presenting an overview of bitmap indices, his recent work in the area of compressing bitmap indices, and several open problems relating to the topic. The audience will not expected to have prior knowledge of databases, indexing, or bitmaps.