Applying on-line bitmap indexing to reduce counting costs in mining association rules

Counting costs have a great impact on efficiency of mining association rule s in a large database of sales transactions. In this paper, we first formal ly analyze the facts that determine counting costs. Secondly, we present an on-line bitmap indexing technique to speed-up the counting process. Beside s theoretical analysis, our implementation reports suggest that this indexi ng technique may reduce counting costs up to 50%, and almost at no costs. ( C) 1999 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.