ITR: Keyword Searching in Loosely Coupled Distributed Systems

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

Loosely coupled distributed systems are those in which nodes can join, leave, or fail at high rates without centralized control and network connections or topology can be highly unstable. Examples include self-organizing overlay networks, mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), and sensor networks. This proposal seeks to address issues in supporting key searching in these dynamic systems. Keyword searching is an extremely effective utility for many higher-level distributed services, such as information retrieval in overlay networks and habitat monitoring for sensor networks. This proposal seeks to build a distributed keyword searching framework that achieves a desirable level of system scalability, search speed, content staleness, and quality of search. The heart of the proposed design is a distributed data structure called a summary index, which maintains gradually less accurate search index for content farther away to achieve scalability. This project contains three main thrusts: 1. creating a robust "summary index"-based keyword searching framework for loosely coupled distributed systems, 2. examining the design of various system components and studying the tradeoffs among performance metrics, and 3. incorporating system integration and application studies.