A quadtree-based dynamic attribute indexing method

Dynamic attributes are attributes that change continuously over time making it impractical to issue explicit updates for every change. In this paper, a variant of the quadtree structure to solve the problem of indexing dynamic attributes is presented. The approach is based on the key idea of using a linear function of time for each dynamic attribute that allows prediction of its value in the future. An algorithm for regenerating the quadtree-based index periodically that minimizes CPU and disk access cost is described and an experimental study of performance focusing on query processing and index update overheads is presented. (Original abstract - amended)