Top-k search, which reports the k elements of the highest importance from all the elements in an underlying dataset that satisfy a certain predicate, has attracted significant attention from the database community. The search efficiency crucially depends on the quality of an index structure that can be utilized to filter the underlying data by both the user-specified predicate and the ranking of importance. This article introduces the reader to a list of techniques for designing such indexes with strong performance guarantees. Several promising directions for future work are also discussed.

中文翻译：

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Top-k 索引设计指南

Top-k 搜索，它报告基础数据集中满足某个谓词的所有元素中重要性最高的 k 个元素，引起了数据库社区的极大关注。搜索效率关键取决于索引结构的质量，该索引结构可用于通过用户指定的谓词和重要性排名来过滤基础数据。本文向读者介绍了设计具有强大性能保证的此类索引的技术列表。还讨论了未来工作的几个有希望的方向。