An efficient skyline query algorithm in the distributed environment

•The Skyline operator plays an important role in multiple criteria decision making. The tranditional skyline query cannot be apply to the distributed environment. Therefore, in this paper, the distributed skyline query algorithm (DSQ) is proposed to process skyline queries in the distributed environment.•In order to improve the query efficiency, the hierarchical grid index structure is proposed to process the whole data set, and then a dominance graph is proposed to denote the dominance relationship between grids.•In the parallel computing phase, the rotation scheduling strategy ensures that the load of each data node is balanced and avoids the emergence of bottleneck nodes.