HyBiX: A novel encoding bitmap index for space- and time-efficient query processing

Abstract

A bitmap-based index is an effective and efficient indexing method for answering selective queries in a read- only environment. It offers improved query execution time by applying low-cost Boolean operators on the index directly, before accessing raw data. A drawback of the bitmap index is that index size increases with the cardinality of indexed attributes, which additionally has an impact on a query execution time. This impact is related to an increase of query execution time due to the scanning of bitmap vectors to answer the queries. In this paper, we propose a new encoding bitmap index, called the HyBiX bitmap index. The HyBiX bitmap index was experimentally compared to existing encoding bitmap indexes in terms of space requirement, query execution time, and space and time trade-off for equality and range queries. As experimental results, the HyBiX bitmap index can reduce space requirements with high cardinality attributes with satisfactory execution times for both equality and range queries. The performance of the HyBiX bitmap index provides the second-best results for equality queries and the first-best for range queries in terms of space and time trade-off.