Faster join-projects and sparse matrix multiplications

Computing an equi-join followed by a duplicate eliminating projection is conventionally done by performing the two operations in serial. If some join attribute is projected away the intermediate result may be much larger than both the input and the output, and the computation could therefore potentially be performed faster by a direct procedure that does not produce such a large intermediate result. We present a new algorithm that has smaller intermediate results on worst-case inputs, and in particular is more efficient in both the RAM and I/O model. It is easy to see that join-project where the join attributes are projected away is equivalent to boolean matrix multiplication. Our results can therefore also be interpreted as improved sparse, output-sensitive matrix multiplication.