18. The apparatus of claim 17 , wherein said determining the dominating set of said ordered data entries, comprises: maintaining a priority queue of a predetermined size of said ordered data entries according to said rank attributes, wherein data entries having highest combined rank attribute values are maintained in said priority queue; wherein, if said priority queue has reached a maximum capacity, only data entries having combined rank attribute values greater than an attribute value of data entries with a minimum rank value present in the priority queue are added to the priority queue.
17. An apparatus, comprising a memory storing information and program instructions and a processor executing said instructions, said apparatus adapted to perform a method of creating a ranked join index for ordered data entries comprising: determining a dominating set of said ordered data entries; mapping said dominating set of said ordered data entries according to rank attributes; determining a separating vector for each set of adjacent mapped data entries; and ordering said data entries according to a separating point associated with each of said separating vectors.