ASSIGNMENT QUERY AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN MOVING OBJECT DATABASES

Moving object databases (MOD) are being used in a wide range of location-based services that are of growing interest in many application areas. In the literature, several query types such as nearest neighbor, reverse nearest neighbor, k-nearest neighbor, and proximity queries have been considered in MOD. In this paper, we propose a novel operator called the assignment operator as a query type for MOD. The assignment operator is an operator used in a query to solve the assignment problem (also known as the weighted bipartite graph-matching problem). Assignment operator finds a perfect match between two sets of objects in a manner that minimizes a total cost. For instance, a set of moving objects such as taxi cabs are assigned to a set of customers in a manner that minimizes the total cost of traveling for the taxis. A possible implementation of the assignment operator in MOD and its performance evaluation are given.