A challenging issue in fast-evolving pure P2P networks is the design of an appropriate mechanism for processing queries. Since both the data content of the peers as well as their acquaintances, change rapidly the typical P2P querying techniques become inappropriate. We are interested in P2P networks where peers are mobile and own a database. In this dynamic context the usage of a Mobile Agent framework appears very promising. The paper investigates the issues related to the above problem and proposes a P2P and Mobile Agent architecture based on Active Database technology. We argue that, the employment of ECA rules both for answering queries and deploying agents leads to an efficient as well as simple query processing technique. Furthermore, the proposed mobile agent system architecture offers a number of advantages due to the performance and scalability that can be achieved using Active Databases.

Efficient star query processing is crucial for a performant data warehouse (DW) implementation and much work is available on physical optimization (e.g., indexing and schema design) and logical optimization (e.g., pre-aggregated materialized views with query rewriting). One important step in the query processing phase is, however, still a bottleneck: the residual join of results from the fact table with the dimension tables in combination with grouping and aggregation. This phase typically consumes between 50% and 80% of the overall processing time. In typical DW scenarios pre-grouping methods only have a limited effect as the grouping is usually specified on the hierarchy levels of the dimension tables and not on the fact table itself. We suggest a combination of hierarchical clustering and pre-grouping as we have implemented in the relational DBMS Transbase. Exploiting hierarchy semantics for the pre-grouping of fact table result tuples is several times faster than conventional query processing. The reason for this is that hierarchical pre-grouping reduces the number of join operations significantly. With this method even queries covering a large part of the fact table can be executed within a time span acceptable for interactive query processing.

On-line analytical processing (OLAP) is a technology that encompasses applications requiring a multidimensional and hierarchical view of data. OLAP applications often require fast response time to complex grouping/aggregation queries on enormous quantities of data. Commercial relational database management systems use mainly multiple one-dimensional indexes to process OLAP queries that restrict multiple dimensions. However, in many cases, multidimensional access methods outperform one-dimensional indexing methods.We present an architecture for multidimensional databases that are clustered with respect to multiple hierarchical dimensions. It is based on the star schema and is called CSB star. Then, we focus on heuristically optimizing OLAP queries over this schema using multidimensional access methods. Users can still formulate their queries over a traditional star scheme, which are then rewritten by the query processor over the CSB star. We exploit the different clustering features of the CSB star to efficiently process a class of typical OLAP queries. We detect special cases where the construction of an evaluation plan can be simplified and we discuss improvements of our technique.