The importance of aggregation

In this paper, we define aggregation as the ability to summarize information. In the area of sensor networks [16.2] it is also referred to as data fusion. It is the basis for scalability for many, if not all, large networking services. For example, address aggregation allows Internet routing to scale.Without it, routing tables would need a separate entry for each Internet address. Besides a problem of memory size, populating the tables would be all but impossible. DNS also makes extensive use of aggregation, allowing domain name to attribute mappings to be resolved in a small number of steps. Many basic distributed paradigms and consistency mechanisms are based on aggregation. For example, synchronization based on voting requires votes to be counted. Aggregation is a standard service in databases. Using SQL queries, users can explicitly aggregate data in one or more tables in a variety of ways.