Apple Inc.
Distributed offline indexing

Abstract:

A distributed offline indexing system uses a set of data processing systems in a distributed computing environment to create an index database that can store, for example, data about geographical or geospatial areas. The index database can be distributed across a plurality of database shards such that each shard includes an index file and a DB file. The index files include keys that refer to values in their corresponding DB files. The keys are used to look-up their corresponding values at search time. At indexing time, the keys are hashed, with an entropy creating hash, to distribute the keys across the shards.