SRX: efficient management of spatial RDF data

Abstract

We present a general encoding scheme for the efficient management of spatial RDF data. The scheme approximates the geometries of the RDF entities inside their (integer) IDs and can be used, along with several operators and optimizations we introduce, to accelerate queries with spatial predicates and to re-encode entities dynamically in case of updates. We implement our ideas in SRX, a system built on top of the popular RDF-3X system. SRX extends RDF-3X with support for three types of spatial queries: range selections (e.g., find entities within a given polygon), spatial joins (e.g., find pairs of entities whose locations are close to each other), and spatial k-nearest neighbors (e.g., find the three closest entities from a given location). We evaluate SRX on spatial queries and updates with real RDF data, and we also compare its performance with the latest versions of three popular RDF stores. The results show SRX ’s superior performance over the competitors; compared to RDF-3X, SRX improves its performance for queries with spatial predicates while incurring little overhead during updates.