Approximate colored range and point enclosure queries

In this paper, we formulate two classes of problems, the colored range query problems and the colored point enclosure query problems to model multi-dimensional range and point enclosure queries in the presence of categorical information. Many of these problems are difficult to solve using traditional data structural techniques. Based on a new framework of combining sketching techniques and traditional data structures, we obtain two sets of results in solving the problems approximately and efficiently. In addition, the framework can be employed to attack other related problems by finding the appropriate summary structures. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.