Distributed Query Processing Using Suffix Arrays

Suffix arrays are more efficient than inverted files for solving complex queries in a number of applications related to text databases. Examples arise when dealing with biological or musical data or with texts written in oriental languages, and when searching for phrases, approximate patterns and, in general, regular expressions involving separators. In this paper we propose algorithms for processing in parallel batches of queries upon distributed text databases. We present efficient alternatives for speeding up query processing using distributed realizations of suffix arrays. Empirical results obtained from natural language text on a cluster of PCs show that the proposed algorithms are efficient in practice.