A generic front-stage for semi-stream processing

Recently, a number of semi-stream join algorithms have been published. The typical system setup for these consists of one fast stream input that has to be joined with a disk-based relation R. These semi-stream join approaches typically perform the join with a limited main memory partition assigned to them, which is generally not large enough to hold the whole relation R. We propose a caching approach that can be used as a front-stage for different semi-stream join algorithms, resulting in significant performance gains for common applications. We analyze our approach in the context of a seminal semi-stream join, MESHJOIN (Mesh Join), and provide a cost model for the resulting semi-stream join algorithm, which we call CMESHJOIN (Cached Mesh Join). The algorithm takes advantage of skewed distributions; this article presents results for Zipfian distributions of the type that appears in many applications.