Frame-sliced signature files

A superimposed coding method, frame-sliced signature file, is proposed, and the performance of this method is studied and compared with that of other signature file methods. The response time of the method is improved due to its ability to effectively partition the signature file so that fewer random disk accesses are required on both retrieval and insertion, while the good characteristics of conventional square file, i.e., low space overhead, low maintenance cost, and the write-once property, are retained. The generalized version of the method is shown to be a unified framework for several popular signature file methods including the sequential signature file (SSF) method, bit-sliced signature file (BSSF) method, and its enhanced version of B´SSF. A prototype system was implemented on UNIX workstations with the C language. Experimental results on a 2.8-Mb database consisting of 2800 technical reports and a 28-Mb database with 28000 technical reports are presented