Global clustering has rarely been investigated in
the area of spatial database systems although dramatic
performance improvements can be
achieved by using suitable techniques. In this paper,
we propose a simple approach to global clustering
called cluster organization. We will demonstrate
that this cluster organization leads to considerable
performance improvements without any
algorithmic overhead. Based on real geographic
data, we perform a detailed empirical performance
evaluation and compare the cluster organization
to other organization models not using global
clustering. We will show that global clustering
speeds up the processing of window queries as
well as spatial joins without decreasing the performance
of the insertion of new objects and of selective
queries such as point queries. The spatial
join is sped up by a factor of about 4, whereas
non-selective window queries are accelerated by
even higher speed up factors