1. According to the given homework statement, the title and description have to be hashed using md5. Is it compulsory to use MD5 hashing while implementing BloomFilter as well? Can we use any other hashing function. -> No. Please follow the spec. ---- 2. Is my interpretation of Inverted File (LSM Tree) correct? On disk, once it reaches the threshold, I write it into "tier_0_A.txt" and subsequent data into "tier_0_B.txt", "tier_0_C.txt" and so on. -> No There will never be a tier_0_C.txt. You would merge tier_0_A.txt and tier_0_B.txt to make tier_1_A.txt ---- 3. In the java application, since workout type is mentioned in the arguments, won't it come in the WHERE clause as well? -> Yes, workout would also appear in the where clause in this case. ---- 4. In the WHERE clause for region, should the latitude and longitude be inclusive? -> Sure