Similarity search is a primitive operation in database and Web search engines. With the advent of large-scale heterogeneous information networks that consist of multi-typed, interconnected objects, such as the bibliographic networks and social media networks, it is important to study similarity search in such networks. Intuitively, two objects are similar if they are linked by many paths in the network. However, most existing similarity measures are defined for homogeneous networks. Different semantic meanings behind paths are not taken into consideration. Thus they cannot be directly applied to heterogeneous networks.In this paper, we study similarity search that is defined among the same type of objects in heterogeneous networks. Moreover, by considering different linkage paths in a network, one could derive various similarity semantics. Therefore, we introduce the concept of meta path-based similarity, where a meta path is a path consisting of a sequence of relations defined between different object types (i.e., structural paths at the meta level). No matter whether a user would like to explicitly specify a path combination given sufficient domain knowledge, or choose the best path by experimental trials, or simply provide training examples to learn it, meta path forms a common base for a network-based similarity search engine. In particular, under the meta path framework we define a novel similarity measure called PathSim that is able to find peer objects in the network (e.g., find authors in the similar field and with similar reputation), which turns out to be more meaningful in many scenarios compared with random-walk based similarity measures. In order to support fast online query processing for PathSim queries, we develop an efficient solution that partially materializes short meta paths and then concatenates them online to compute top-k results. Experiments on real data sets demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed paradigm.

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PathSim: meta path-based top-K similarity search in heterogeneous information networks

This paper tackles a major privacy concern in current location-based services where users have to continuously report their locations to the database server in order to obtain the service. For example, a user asking about the nearest gas station has to report her exact location. With untrusted servers, reporting the location information may lead to several privacy threats. In this paper, we present Casper1; a new framework in which mobile and stationary users can entertain location-based services without revealing their location information. Casper consists of two main components, the location anonymizer and the privacy-aware query processor. The location anonymizer blurs the users' exact location information into cloaked spatial regions based on user-specified privacy requirements. The privacy-aware query processor is embedded inside the location-based database server in order to deal with the cloaked spatial areas rather than the exact location information. Experimental results show that Casper achieves high quality location-based services while providing anonymity for both data and queries.

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The new Casper: query processing for location services without compromising privacy

Despite the importance of spatial networks in real-life applications, most of the spatial database literature focuses on Euclidean spaces. In this paper we propose an architecture that integrates network and Euclidean information, capturing pragmatic constraints. Based on this architecture, we develop a Euclidean restriction and a network expansion framework that take advantage of location and connectivity to efficiently prune the search space. These frameworks are successfully applied to the most popular spatial queries, namely nearest neighbors, range search, closest pairs and e-distance joins, in the context of spatial network databases.

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Query processing in spatial network databases

A heterogeneous information network is an information networkcomposed of multiple types of objects. Clustering on such a network may lead to better understanding of both hidden structures of the network and the individual role played by every object in each cluster. However, although clustering on homogeneous networks has been studied over decades, clustering on heterogeneous networks has not been addressed until recently.A recent study proposed a new algorithm, RankClus, for clustering on bi-typed heterogeneous networks. However, a real-world network may consist of more than two types, and the interactions among multi-typed objects play a key role at disclosing the rich semantics that a network carries. In this paper, we study clustering of multi-typed heterogeneous networks with a star network schema and propose a novel algorithm, NetClus, that utilizes links across multityped objects to generate high-quality net-clusters. An iterative enhancement method is developed that leads to effective ranking-based clustering in such heterogeneous networks. Our experiments on DBLP data show that NetClus generates more accurate clustering results than the baseline topic model algorithm PLSA and the recently proposed algorithm, RankClus. Further, NetClus generates informative clusters, presenting good ranking and cluster membership information for each attribute object in each net-cluster.

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Ranking-based clustering of heterogeneous information networks with star network schema

A frequent type of query in spatial networks (e.g., road networks) is to find the K nearest neighbors (KNN) of a given query object. With these networks, the distances between objects depend on their network connectivity and it is computationally expensive to compute the distances (e.g., shortest paths) between objects. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to efficiently and accurately evaluate KNN queries in spatial network databases using first order Voronoi diagram. This approach is based on partitioning a large network to small Voronoi regions, and then pre-computing distances both within and across the regions. By localizing the precomputation within the regions, we save on both storage and computation and by performing across-the-network computation for only the border points of the neighboring regions, we avoid global pre-computation between every node-pair. Our empirical experiments with several real-world data sets show that our proposed solution outperforms approaches that are based on on-line distance computation by up to one order of magnitude, and provides a factor of four improvement in the selectivity of the filter step as compared to the index-based approaches.

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Voronoi-based K nearest neighbor search for spatial network databases

Real-world road-planning applications often result in the formulation of new variations of the nearest neighbor (NN) problem requiring new solutions. In this paper, we study an unexplored form of NN queries named optimal sequenced route (OSR) query in both vector and metric spaces. OSR strives to find a route of minimum length starting from a given source location and passing through a number of typed locations in a particular order imposed on the types of the locations. We first transform the OSR problem into a shortest path problem on a large planar graph. We show that a classic shortest path algorithm such as Dijkstra's is impractical for most real-world scenarios. Therefore, we propose LORD, a light threshold-based iterative algorithm, which utilizes various thresholds to prune the locations that cannot belong to the optimal route. Then we propose R-LORD, an extension of LORD which uses R-tree to examine the threshold values more efficiently. Finally, for applications that cannot tolerate the Euclidean distance as estimation and require exact distance measures in metric spaces (e.g., road networks) we propose PNE that progressively issues NN queries on different point types to construct the optimal route for the OSR query. Our extensive experiments on both real-world and synthetic datasets verify that our algorithms significantly outperform a disk-based variation of the Dijkstra approach in terms of processing time (up to two orders of magnitude) and required workspace (up to 90% reduction on average).

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The optimal sequenced route query

A very important class of queries in GIS applications is the class of K-Nearest Neighbor queries. Most of the current studies on the K-Nearest Neighbor queries utilize spatial index structures and hence are based on the Euclidean distances between the points. In real-world road networks, however, the shortest distance between two points depends on the actual path connecting the points and cannot be computed accurately using one of the Minkowski metrics. Thus, the Euclidean distance may not properly approximate the real distance. In this paper, we apply an embedding technique to transform a road network to a high dimensional space in order to utilize computationally simple Minkowski metrics for distance measurement. Subsequently, we extend our approach to dynamically transform new points into the embedding space. Finally, we propose an efficient technique that can find the actual shortest path between two points in the original road network using only the embedding space. Our empirical experiments indicate that the Chessboard distance metric (∞) in the embedding space preserves the ordering of the distances between a point and its neighbors more precisely as compared to the Euclidean distance in the original road network.

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A road network embedding technique for k-nearest neighbor search in moving object databases

A very important class of queries in GIS applications is the class of K-nearest neighbor queries. Most of the current studies on the K-nearest neighbor queries utilize spatial index structures and hence are based on the Euclidean distances between the points. In real-world road networks, however, the shortest distance between two points depends on the actual path connecting the points and cannot be computed accurately using one of the Minkowski metrics. Thus, the Euclidean distance may not properly approximate the real distance. In this paper, we apply an embedding technique to transform a road network to a high dimensional space in order to utilize computationally simple Minkowski metrics for distance measurement. Subsequently, we extend our approach to dynamically transform new points into the embedding space. Finally, we propose an efficient technique that can find the actual shortest path between two points in the original road network using only the embedding space. Our empirical experiments indicate that the Chessboard distance metric (L∞) in the embedding space preserves the ordering of the distances between a point and its neighbors more precisely as compared to the Euclidean distance in the original road network.

A Road Network Embedding Technique for K-Nearest Neighbor Search in Moving Object Databases

Continuous K nearest neighbor queries (C-KNN) are defined as finding the nearest points of interest along an enitre path (e.g., finding the three nearest gas stations to a moving car on any point of a pre-specified path). The result of this type of query is a set of intervals (or split points) and their corresponding KNNs, such that the KNNs of all points within each interval are the same. The current studies on C-KNN focus on vector spaces where the distance between two objects is a function of their spatial attributes (e.g., Euclidean distance metric). These studies are not applicable to spatial network databases (SNDB) where the distance between two objects is a function of the network connectivity (e.g., shortest path between two objects). In this paper, we propose two techniques to address C-KNN queries in SNDB: Intersection Examination (IE) and Upper Bound Algorithm (UBA). With IE, we first find the KNNs of all nodes on a path and then, for those adjacent nodes whose nearest neighbors are different, we find the intermediate split points. Finally, we compute the KNNs of the split points using the KNNs of the surrounding nodes. The intuition behind UBA is that the performance of IE can be improved by determining the adjacent nodes that cannot have any split points in between, and consequently eliminating the computation of KNN queries for those nodes. Our empirical experiments show that the UBA approach outperforms IE, specially when the points of interest are sparsely distributed in the network.

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Mohammad R. Kolahdouzan

Papers

Voronoi-based K nearest neighbor search for spatial network databases

The optimal sequenced route query

A road network embedding technique for k-nearest neighbor search in moving object databases

A Road Network Embedding Technique for K-Nearest Neighbor Search in Moving Object Databases

Alternative Solutions for Continuous K Nearest Neighbor Queries in Spatial Network Databases