The area of similarity searching is a very hot topic for both research and c- mercial applications. Current data processing applications use data with c- siderably less structure and much less precise queries than traditional database systems. Examples are multimedia data like images or videos that offer query by example search, product catalogs that provide users with preference based search, scientific data records from observations or experimental analyses such as biochemical and medical data, or XML documents that come from hetero- neous data sources on the Web or in intranets and thus...

The area of similarity searching is a very hot topic for both research and c- mercial applications. Current data processing applications use data with c- siderably less structure and much less precise queries than traditional database systems. Examples are multimedia data like images or videos that offer query by example search, product catalogs that provide users with preference based search, scientific data records from observations or experimental analyses such as biochemical and medical data, or XML documents that come from hetero- neous data sources on the Web or in intranets and thus...