Distributed Selection: A Missing Piece of Data Aggregation.

In this article, we study the problem of distributed selection from a theoretical point of view. Given a general connected graph of diameter D consisting of n nodes in which each node holds a numeric element, the goal of a k-selection algorithm is to determine the kth smallest of these elements. We...

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Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 51; no. 9; pp. 93 - 100
Main Authors: Kuhn, Fabian, Locher, Thomas, Wattenhofer, Roger
Format: Article
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Sep2008
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Distributed Selection: A Missing Piece of Data Aggregation.
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          Kuhn, Fabian
          Locher, Thomas
          Wattenhofer, Roger
        affil:
          Postdoc researcher, Institute of Theoretical Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
          Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
          Professor, Head of Distributed Computing Group, Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
      su:
        Database management software
        Algorithms
        Aggregation operators
        Database design
        Management information systems
        Electronic data processing
        Computer software
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        subj:
          Database management software
          Algorithms
          Aggregation operators
          Database design
          Management information systems
          Electronic data processing
          Computer software
      ab: In this article, we study the problem of distributed selection from a theoretical point of view. Given a general connected graph of diameter D consisting of n nodes in which each node holds a numeric element, the goal of a k-selection algorithm is to determine the kth smallest of these elements. We prove that distributed selection indeed requires more work than other aggregation functions such as, e.g., the computation of the average or the maximum of all elements. On the other hand, we show that the kth smallest element can be computed efficiently by providing both a randomized and a deterministic k-selection algorithm, dispelling the misconception that solving distributed selection through in-network aggregation is infeasible.
      pubtype: Periodical
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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