P2P-based multidimensional indexing methods: A survey

P2P-based multidimensional index (MI) is a hotspot which absorbs many researchers to dedicate them into. However, no summarization or review on this technology has been made at present. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work on reviewing P2P-based MI. This paper innovatively adopts visualization technique to show the research groups and then analyzes investigating style of research groups. Based on evolution of P2P-based MI inheriting from centralized MI and P2P, we divide P2P-based MI methods into 4 categories: extending centralized MI, extending P2P, combining centralized MI and P2P, and miscellaneous. For each category, the paper selects classical techniques and describes them in detail. This is the first time of doing the classification job over massive related works. Finally, load balancing and update strategies are described and discussed for they are important factors related to performance. We believe many researchers will get benefits from our work for further studies.

► We adopt visualization technique to show the research groups about P2P-based multidimensional index, and analyze investigating style of the research groups.
► Based on evolution of P2P-based MI inheriting from centralized MI and P2P, P2P-based MI methods are divided into four categories; for each category, classical techniques are selected and described in detail.
► This is the first time of classification job over massive related works, and many researchers will get benefits from our work for further studies.