Indexing Scientific Data

Bitmap indexes were proposed as a solution to these problems. However, in experiments with scientific data and queries, we found that previously proposed variations of bitmap indexes either were quite slow or required excessive storage for processing the large-range query conditions our scientists used. Scientists also told us that bitmap indexes, though smaller than traditional indexes, were too large for scientific data warehouses. Our scientists also wanted an efficient method to consolidate the data points returned by the indexes into larger, more meaningful regions of interest.