Report on prototype implementation of Pausanias

Abstract

Classic web search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, provide efficient algorithms for retrieval of ranked search results given a set of keywords. However, there are also applications that provide the user the opportunity to search using geotagged criteria. These applications are Google Maps, Bing Maps etc. Such applications depict points of interest on the map and combine their location with the keywords provided by the associated document(s). These queries are so called spatial queries. Although in many cases spatial constraints seem to suffice, sometimes there is a need to combine spatial and textual information to find points of interests. These queries are called Spatio-Textual Queries. There is an active research interest in spatio-textual queries and more specifically in the efficient retrieval of topK Spatio-Textual Queries. This project employs 5 different queries ranging from simple Boolean Spatial Range Queries to TopK Spatio-Textual Range Queries. In this way the user will be able to choose among 5 queries to satisfy his/her constraints. In the following, there will be an explanation of the data structure and the algorithms that Pausanias employed.