An accurate selectivity estimation method for window queries and an implementation thereof

Spatial selectivity estimation is crucial to choose the cheapest execution plan for a given query in a query optimizer. This article proposes an accurate spatial selectivity estimation method based on the cumulative density (CD) histograms, which can deal with any arbitrary spatial query window. In this method, the selectivity can be estimated in original logic of the CD histogram, after the four corner values of a query window have been accurately interpolated on the continuous surface of the elevation histogram. For the interpolation of any corner points, we first identify the cells that can affect the value of point (x, y) in the CD histogram. These cells can be categorized into two classes: ones within the range from (0, 0) to (x, y) and the other overlapping the range from (0, 0) to (x, y). The values of the former class can be used directly, whereas we revise the values of any cells falling in the latter class by the number of vertices in the corresponding cell and the area ratio covered by the range from (0, 0) to (x, y). This revision makes the estimation method more accurate. The CD histograms and estimation method have been implemented in INGRES. Experiment results show that the method can accurately estimate the selectivity of arbitrary query windows and can help the optimizer choose a cheaper query plan.