30. The program storage device of claim 26 wherein the data is stored in one of a spatial database or a multimedia database which includes a plurality of data records each containing a plurality of fields, further comprising the steps of: creating a representation of the database to be indexed as a set of vectors, where each vector corresponds to a row in the database and the elements of each vector correspond to the values, for a particular row, contained in the columns for which the searchable index will be generated; and said partitioning comprising partitioning the vectors into said one or more clusters.
26. A program storage device readable by a machine which includes one or more reduced dimensionality indexes to multidimensional data, the program storage device tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform method steps for representing multidimensional data, said method steps comprising: a) partitioning the multidimensional data into one or more clusters; b) generating and storing clustering information for said one or more clusters; c) generating one or more reduced dimensionality clusters and dimensionality reduction information for said one or more clusters; and d) storing the dimensionality reduction information; e) creating a hierarchy of reduced dimensionality clusters by recursively applying said steps a) through d); and f) generating and storing one or more low-dimensional indexes for clusters at a lowest level of said hierarchy.