The Skyline operator

Abstract: We propose to extend database systems by a Skyline operation. This operation filters out a set of interesting points from a potentially large set of data points. A point is interesting if it is not dominated by any other point. For example, a hotel might be interesting for somebody traveling to Nassau if no other hotel is both cheaper and closer to the beach. We show how SQL can be extended to pose Skyline queries, present and evaluate alternative algorithms to implement the Skyline operation, and show how this operation can be combined with other database operations, e.g., join.