Performance analysis of R*-trees with arbitrary node extents

Existing analysis for R-trees is inadequate for several traditional and emerging applications including, for example, temporal, spatio-temporal, and multimedia databases because it is based on the assumption that the extents of a node are identical on all dimensions, which is not satisfied in these domains. We propose analytical models that can accurately predict R*-tree performance without this assumption. Our derivation is based on the novel concept of extent regression function, which computes the node extents as a function of the number of node splits. Detailed experimental evaluation reveals that the proposed models are accurate, even in cases where previous methods fail completely.