DD-Rtree: A dynamic distributed data structure for efficient data distribution among cluster nodes for spatial data mining algorithms

Parallelizing data mining algorithms has become a necessity as we try to mine ever increasing volumes of data. Spatial data mining algorithms like Dbscan, Optics, Slink, etc. have been parallelized to exploit a cluster infrastructure. The efficiency achieved by existing algorithms can be attributed to spatial locality preservation using spatial indexing structures like k-d-tree, quad-tree, grid files, etc. for distributing data among cluster nodes. However, these indexing structures are static in nature, i.e., they need to scan the entire dataset to determine the partitioning coordinates. This results in high data distribution cost when the data size is large. In this paper, we propose a dynamic distributed data structure, DD-Rtree, which preserves spatial locality while distributing data across compute nodes in a shared nothing environment. Moreover, DD-Rtree is dynamic, i.e., it can be constructed incrementally making it useful for handling big data. We compare the quality of data distribution achieved by DD-Rtree with one of the recent distributed indexing structure, SD-Rtree. We also compare the efficiency of queries supported by these indexing structures along with the overall efficiency of DBSCAN algorithm. Our experimental results show that DD-Rtree achieves better data distribution and thereby resulting in improved overall efficiency.