The design of a retrieval technique for high-dimensional data on tertiary storage

In high-energy physics experiments, large particle accelerators produce enormous quantities of data, measured in hundreds of terabytes or petabytes per year, which are deposited onto tertiary storage. The experiments are designed to study the collisions of fundamental particles, called "events", each of which is represented as a point in a multi-dimensional universe. In these environments, the best retrieval performance can be achieved only if the data is clustered on the tertiary storage by all searchable attributes of the events. Since the number of these attributes is high, the underlying data-management facility must be able to cope with extremely large volumes and very high dimensionalities of data at the same time. The proposed indexing technique is designed to facilitate both clustering and efficient retrieval of high-dimensional data on tertiary storage. The structure uses an original space-partitioning scheme, which has numerous advantages over other space-partitioning techniques. While the main objective of the design is to support high-energy physics experiments, the proposed solution is appropriate for many other scientific applications.