Efficient tuple search algorithm - algorithm

Question

Given a store of 3-tuples where:
All elements are numeric ex :( 1, 3, 4) (1300, 3, 15) (1300, 3, 15) …
Tuples are removed and added frequently
At any time the store is typically under 100,000 elements
All Tuples are available in memory
The application is interactive requiring 100s of searches per second.
What are the most efficient algorithms/data structures to perform wild card (*) searches such as:
(1, *, 6) (3601, *, *) (*, 1935, *)
The aim is to have a Linda like tuple space but on an application level

Answer 1

Well, there are only 8 possible arrangements of wildcards, so you can easily construct 6 multi-maps and a set to serve as indices: one for each arrangement of wildcards in the query. You don't need an 8th index because the query (*,*,*) trivially returns all tuples. The set is for tuples with no wildcards; only a membership test is needed in this case.
A multimap takes a key to a set. In your example, e.g., the query (1,*,6) would consult the multimap for queries of the form (X,*,Y), which takes key <X,Y> to the set of all tuples with X in the first position and Y in third. In this case, X=1 and Y=6.
With any reasonable hash-based multimap implementation, lookups ought to be very fast. Several hundred a second ought to be easy, and several thousand per second doable (with e.g a contemporary x86 CPU).
Insertions and deletions require updating the maps and set. Again this ought to be reasonably fast, though not as fast as lookups of course. Again several hundred per second ought to be doable.
With only ~10^5 tuples, this approach ought to be fine for memory as well. You can save a bit of space with tricks, e.g. keeping a single copy of each tuple in an array and storing indices in the map/set to represent both key and value. Manage array slots with a free list.
To make this concrete, here is pseudocode. I'm going to use angle brackets <a,b,c> for tuples to avoid too many parens:
# Definitions
For a query Q <k2,k1,k0> where each of k_i is either * or an integer,
Let I(Q) be a 3-digit binary number b2|b1|b0 where
b_i=0 if k_i is * and 1 if k_i is an integer.
Let N(i) be the number of 1's in the binary representation of i
Let M(i) be a multimap taking a tuple with N(i) elements to a set
of tuples with 3 elements.
Let t be a 3 element tuple. Then T(t,i) returns a new tuple with
only the elements of t in positions where i has a 1. For example
T(<1,2,3>,0) = <> and T(<1,2,3>,6) = <2,3>
Note that function T works fine on query tuples with wildcards.
# Algorithm to insert tuple T into the database:
fun insert(t)
for i = 0 to 7
add the entry T(t,i)->t to M(i)
# Algorithm to delete tuple T from the database:
fun delete(t)
for i = 0 to 7
delete the entry T(t,i)->t from M(i)
# Query algorithm
fun query(Q)
let i = I(Q)
return M(i).lookup(T(Q, i)) # lookup failure returns empty set
Note that for simplicity, I've not shown the "optimizations" for M(0) and M(7). For M(0), the algorithm above would create a multimap taking the empty tuple to the set of all 3-tuples in the database. You can avoid this merely by treating i=0 as a special case. Similarly M(7) would take each tuple to a set containing only itself.
An "optimized" version:
fun insert(t)
for i = 1 to 6
add the entry T(t,i)->t to M(i)
add t to set S
fun delete(t)
for i = 1 to 6
delete the entry T(t,i)->t from M(i)
remove t from set S
fun query(Q)
let i = I(Q)
if i = 0, return S
elsif i = 7 return if Q\in S { Q } else {}
else return M(i).lookup(T(Q, i))
Addition
For fun, a Java implementation:
package hacking;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.Scanner;
import java.util.Set;
public class Hacking {
public static void main(String [] args) {
TupleDatabase db = new TupleDatabase();
int n = 200000;
long start = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
db.insert(db.randomTriple());
}
long stop = System.nanoTime();
double elapsedSec = (stop - start) * 1e-9;
System.out.println("Inserted " + n + " tuples in " + elapsedSec
+ " seconds (" + (elapsedSec / n * 1000.0) + "ms per insert).");
Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in);
for (;;) {
System.out.print("Query: ");
int a = in.nextInt();
int b = in.nextInt();
int c = in.nextInt();
System.out.println(db.query(new Tuple(a, b, c)));
}
}
}
class Tuple {
static final int [] N_ONES = new int[] { 0, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 3 };
static final int STAR = -1;
final int [] vals;
Tuple(int a, int b, int c) {
vals = new int[] { a, b, c };
}
Tuple(Tuple t, int code) {
vals = new int[N_ONES[code]];
int m = 0;
for (int k = 0; k < 3; ++k) {
if (((1 << k) & code) > 0) {
vals[m++] = t.vals[k];
}
}
}
#Override
public boolean equals(Object other) {
if (other instanceof Tuple) {
Tuple triple = (Tuple) other;
return Arrays.equals(this.vals, triple.vals);
}
return false;
}
#Override
public int hashCode() {
return Arrays.hashCode(this.vals);
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return Arrays.toString(vals);
}
int code() {
int c = 0;
for (int k = 0; k < 3; k++) {
if (vals[k] != STAR) {
c |= (1 << k);
}
}
return c;
}
Set<Tuple> setOf() {
Set<Tuple> s = new HashSet<>();
s.add(this);
return s;
}
}
class Multimap extends HashMap<Tuple, Set<Tuple>> {
#Override
public Set<Tuple> get(Object key) {
Set<Tuple> r = super.get(key);
return r == null ? Collections.<Tuple>emptySet() : r;
}
void put(Tuple key, Tuple value) {
if (containsKey(key)) {
super.get(key).add(value);
} else {
super.put(key, value.setOf());
}
}
void remove(Tuple key, Tuple value) {
Set<Tuple> set = super.get(key);
set.remove(value);
if (set.isEmpty()) {
super.remove(key);
}
}
}
class TupleDatabase {
final Set<Tuple> set;
final Multimap [] maps;
TupleDatabase() {
set = new HashSet<>();
maps = new Multimap[7];
for (int i = 1; i < 7; i++) {
maps[i] = new Multimap();
}
}
void insert(Tuple t) {
set.add(t);
for (int i = 1; i < 7; i++) {
maps[i].put(new Tuple(t, i), t);
}
}
void delete(Tuple t) {
set.remove(t);
for (int i = 1; i < 7; i++) {
maps[i].remove(new Tuple(t, i), t);
}
}
Set<Tuple> query(Tuple q) {
int c = q.code();
switch (c) {
case 0: return set;
case 7: return set.contains(q) ? q.setOf() : Collections.<Tuple>emptySet();
default: return maps[c].get(new Tuple(q, c));
}
}
Random gen = new Random();
int randPositive() {
return gen.nextInt(1000);
}
Tuple randomTriple() {
return new Tuple(randPositive(), randPositive(), randPositive());
}
}
Some output:
Inserted 200000 tuples in 2.981607358 seconds (0.014908036790000002ms per insert).
Query: -1 -1 -1
[[504, 296, 987], [500, 446, 184], [499, 482, 16], [488, 823, 40], ...
Query: 500 446 -1
[[500, 446, 184], [500, 446, 762]]
Query: -1 -1 500
[[297, 56, 500], [848, 185, 500], [556, 351, 500], [779, 986, 500], [935, 279, 500], ...

Answer 2

If you think of the tuples like a ip address, then a radix tree (trie) type structure might work. Radix tree is used for IP discovery.
Another way maybe to calculate use bit operations and calculate a bit hash for the tuple and in your search do bit (or, and) for quick discovery.