A Multi-Colony Ant Algorithm for Optimizing Join Queries in Distributed Database Systems

Distributed database systems provide a new data processing and storage technology for decentralized organizations of today. Query optimization, the process to generate an optimal execution plan for the posed query, is more challenging in such systems due to the huge search space of alternative plans incurred by distribution. As finding an optimal execution plan is computationally intractable, using stochastic-based algorithms has drawn the attention of most researchers. In this paper, for the first time, a multi-colony ant algorithm is proposed for optimizing join queries in a distributed environment where relations can be replicated but not fragmented. In the proposed algorithm, four types of ants collaborate to create an execution plan. Hence, there are four ant colonies in each iteration. Each type of ant makes an important decision to find the optimal plan. In order to evaluate the quality of the generated plan, two cost models are used—one based on the total time and the other on the response time. The proposed algorithm is compared with two previous genetic-based algorithms on chain, tree and cyclic queries. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm saves up to about 80 % of optimization time with no significant difference in the quality of generated plans compared with the best existing genetic-based algorithm.