Multi-source Skyline Query Processing in Road Networks

Skyline query processing has been investigated extensively in recent years, mostly for only one query reference point. An example of a single-source skyline query is to find hotels which are cheap and close to the beach (an absolute query), or close to a user-given location (a relatively query). A multi-source skyline query considers several query points at the same time (e.g., to find hotels which are cheap and close to the University, the Botanic Garden and the China Town). In this paper, we consider the problem of efficient multi-source skyline query processing in road networks. It is not only the first effort to consider multi-source skyline query in road networks but also the first effort to process the relative skyline queries where the network distance between two locations needs to be computed on-the-fly. Three different query processing algorithms are proposed and evaluated in this paper. The Lower Bound Constraint algorithm (LBC) is proven to be an instance optimal algorithm. Extensive experiments using large real road network datasets demonstrate that LBC is four times more efficient than a straightforward algorithm.