Future trends in similarity searching

Abstract

Similarity searching has been a research issue for many years, and searching has probably become the most important web application today. As the complexity of data objects grows, it is more and more difficult to reason about digital objects otherwise than through the similarity. In this article, we first discuss concepts of similarity and searching in light of future perspectives before a concise history of similarity searching technology is presented. We use the historical knowledge to extend the trends to future. We analyze the bottlenecks of application development and discuss perspectives of search computing for future applications. We also present a model of search technology and its position in computer clouds for application development. Finally, execution platforms for multi-modal findability and security issues for outsourced similarity searching environments are suggested as important research challenges. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.