Reverse Top-k Queries

Akrivi Vlachou*, Christos Doulkeridis*, Yannis Kotidis#, Kjetil Nrvg*

*Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway
#
Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Greece

Outline
Motivation

& Preliminaries
Monochromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Bichromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Threshold-based

Algorithm
Materialized Views
Experimental

Evaluation
Conclusions & Future Work
2

Rank-aware Query Processing

Huge

amount of
available data
Users prefer to retrieve
a limited set of k
ranked data objects
that best match their
preferences (top-k
queries)
3

Top-k Query

Given a scoring function f(),

retrieve the k object that best
match the user preferences
Linear scoring function
f w(p) = w[i]*p[i]

Weight w[i]:

relative importance of attribute i

Definition TOPk(w): Given a

weighting vector w and a
positive integer k, find the k data
points p with the minimum f(p)
scores

Query line of w at point p: defines the

score of p
Query space of w defined by point p:
number of enclosed points determines
the rank of p
4

Reversing the Top-k Query

From

the perspective of
manufacturers:
it is important that a
product is returned in
the highest ranked
positions for as many
user preferences as
possible
estimate the impact of
a product compared to
their competitors
products
advertise a product to
potential customers

sales representative

Which customers
would be interested?

customer customer customer customer

5

Reversing the Top-k Query

Reverse

top-k query:

Given a potential product q

and a positive integer k,
which are the weighting
vectors w for which q is in
the top-k query result set?
Two

different versions
Monochromatic:

sales representative

no knowledge of user
preferences

Bichromatic:

a dataset with user

preferences is given

customer customer customer customer

6

Car Database Example

A database containing information about different cars

Different users have different preferences
Bob prefers a cheap car, and does not care much about the age
the best choice (top-1) for Bob is the car p1 with score 2.5
Tom prefers a newer car rather than a cheap car
the best choice for Tom and Max is the car p2

Car Database Example

Query point q=p2, k=1:

Bichromatic reverse top-k: {(0.2,0.8), (0.5,0.5)}

advertise product to Tom and Max

Monochromatic reverse top-k: line segment w[price]=[1/7,5/6]

estimate the impact of p2 as 69%

Query point q=p3, k=1: empty result set for the bichromatic query

Outline
Motivation

& Preliminaries
Monochromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Bichromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Threshold-based

Algorithm
Materialized Views
Experimental

Evaluation
Conclusions & Future Work
9

Monochromatic Reverse Top-k Query

mRTOPk(q): Given a point q, a

positive number k and a dataset
S, the result set of the
monochromatic reverse top-k
query is the locus for which
there exists p in TOPk(wi) such
that fwi(q) fwi(p).
The solution space W can be
split into a finite set of nonadjacent partitions such that
query point q has the same rank
for all the weighting vectors.
For the monochromatic case: we
focus on the 2-d space

mRTOP1(q)
1

Solution space
10

Geometric Interpretation d=2, k =1

If q belongs to the convex hull, then

there exists exactly one partition in

mRTOP1(q)

Weighting vectors that are

perpendicular to pq and qr define the
line segment
For weighting vectors with smaller and
larger slopes than w1, the relative order
of p and q changes

Monochromatic

reverse top-k, k>1:

The solution space may contain

more than 1 partition
11

Outline
Motivation

& Preliminaries
Monochromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Bichromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Threshold-based

Algorithm
Materialized Views
Experimental

Evaluation
Conclusions & Future Work
14

Bichromatic Reverse Top-k Query

bRTOPk(q):

Given a point q, a positive number k

and two datasets S and W, where S represents data
points and W is a dataset containing different
weighting vectors, a weighting vector wi belongs to
the result set, if and only if there exists p in TOPk(wi)
such that fwi(q) fwi(p)

Nave

approach:
for each weighting vector process the top-k query
test if query point q is in the top-k list
15

Threshold-based Algorithm (RTA)

Goal:
reduce

the number of top-k evaluations by discarding

weighting vectors

Threshold-based Algorithm
sort

(RTA):

the weighting vectors based on pairwise similarity

top-k

sets

queries defined by similar vectors, have similar result

evaluate

the first top-k query, calculate a threshold

For each weighting vector
possibly

prune based on threshold

refine threshold

16

Example of RTA Algorithm (k=2)

Evaluate

top-2 query

for w1

p9

p8

Set

threshold based
on w2

fw2(q)

> threshold
discard w2

Refine

Buffer: p1, p2

threshold for

p10

p5
p1

p6
p4

w3
p
2
w1
w2

p7
p3

w3
W=[ w1, w2, w3 ]

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Materialized Views
Threshold-based Algorithm

(RTA)

reduce

the top-k evaluations by discarding some

weighting vectors that are not in the reverse top-k
result set
process at least as many top-k evaluations as the
cardinality of the result set
Materialized

Views

find

weighting vectors that belong definitely to

the result without top-k evaluation
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Materialized Views
Grid-based

space

w1, w2, w3

partitioning
cell

Ci

lower

left corner CiL

upper

right corner CiU

We store

for each cell Ci

the results of reverse
top-k queries for corners
CiL and CiU
19

Materialized Views
Given

a point q enclosed
in cell Ci
all weighting vectors
in RTOPk(CiU) belong
to the result set of q
only weighting
vectors in

w1, w2, w3

RTOPk(CiL) - RTOPk(CiU)

have to be examined
Materialized views can
be generalized for
arbitrary k<K values

w1, w2, w3 , w4
20

Outline
Motivation

& Preliminaries
Monochromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Bichromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Threshold-based

Algorithm
Materialized Views
Experimental

Evaluation
Conclusions & Future Work
21

Experimental Setup
Comparison

between Nave and RTA

(varying dimensionality, cardinality, data
distribution real data)
Queries: uniform and k-skyband points
Metrics:
time
I/Os
number

of top-k evaluations
22

RTA vs. Nave

uniform distribution of S and uniform weights W
|S|=10K, |W|=10K, top-k=10, skyband query points

RTA outperforms naive by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude

as dimensionality increases, |RTOPk(q)| decreases leading to
fewer top-k evaluations

23

Scalability of RTA Algorithm

various distributions (UN, AC, CO) of S and uniform weights W
|S|=10K or |W|=10K, d=5, top-k=10, skyband query points

naive requires |W| top-k query evaluations

|W|=5K, correlated dataset:
RTA needs on 544 out of 5000 top-k evaluations (saves 89.12% of the cost)
the average size of the result set is 459
24

Performance of RTA on Real Data

NBA consists of 17265 tuples, d=5 (number of points scored, rebounds,
assists, steals and blocks)
HOUSE consists of 127930 tuples, d=6 (income spent on gas, electricity,
water, heating, insurance, and property tax)

uniform and clustered weights W (|W|=10K)

clustered weights lead to fewer top-k evaluations
25

Outline
Motivation

& Preliminaries
Example of Reverse Top-k Queries
Monochromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Bichromatic Reverse Top-k Queries
Threshold-based

Algorithm
Materialized Views
Experimental

Evaluation
Conclusions & Future Work
26

Conclusions and Future Work

We introduced

reverse top-k queries

geometric interpretation of the solution space
efficient algorithm for bichromatic reverse top-k
query
materialized reverse top-k views
Future Work
interpretation of solution space for higher
dimensions (monochromatic reverse top-k)
improve the performance of the bichromatic reverse
top-k computation
27

Thank you!
Related work:
Akrivi Vlachou, Christos Doulkeridis, Yannis Kotidis, Kjetil Nrvg: "Reverse
Top-k Queries"
Akrivi Vlachou, Christos Doulkeridis, Kjetil Nrvg, Yannis Kotidis: "Identifying
the Most Influential Data Objects with Reverse Top-k Queries"

More information: http://www.idi.ntnu.no/~vlachou/

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