On the Relative Cost of Sampling for Join Selectivity Estimation

Summary: Quantifies when sampling (t_cross) is cheaper than computing the exact star-join for selectivity estimation, deriving bounds and approximations for relative cost as functions of input relation sizes, arity, and the estimator's precision criterion. Identifies dangling tuples as a major negative factor and characterizes mixed effects of data skew, yielding concrete regimes and thresholds that indicate when sampling is or isn't cost-effective for join selectivity estimation. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 1012
Venue: PODS
Year: 1994
Pagerank: 0.00016425612
Overall Rank: 811 | 94.36%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 12 of 12 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
18	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.00092385438
211	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00033981214
217	Ripple Joins for Online Aggregation	1999	SIGMOD	0.00033536712
553	Bifocal Sampling for Skew-Resistant Join Size Estimation	1996	SIGMOD	0.00020272061
1,737	QuickSel: Quick Selectivity Learning with Mixture Models	2020	SIGMOD	0.00010720294
2,969	Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models	2017	VLDB	7.7974762e-05
3,924	A Unified Deep Model of Learning from both Data and Queries for Cardinality Estimation	2021	SIGMOD	6.6271553e-05
6,548	Query Sampling in DB2 Universal Database	2004	SIGMOD	5.0181595e-05
9,691	Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes	2023	SIGMOD	4.3035354e-05
9,838	Efficiently Joining Large Relations on Multi-GPU Systems	2025	VLDB	4.2740344e-05
10,590	ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries	2025	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
10,639	Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses	2025	VLDB	4.1945683e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 11 of 11 cited papers.

Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
39	Statistical Estimators for Relational Algebra Expressions	1988	PODS	0.00074745564
46	Simple Random Sampling from Relational Databases	1986	VLDB	0.00070894702
92	Practical Selectivity Estimation through Adaptive Sampling	1990	SIGMOD	0.00051315959
134	Processing Aggregate Relational Queries with Hard Time Constraints	1989	SIGMOD	0.00042452811
315	Error-Constrained COUNT Query Evaluation in Relational Databases	1991	SIGMOD	0.0002802103
357	Random Sampling from B+ trees	1989	VLDB	0.00026020098
367	Sequential Sampling Procedures For Query Size Estimation	1992	SIGMOD	0.00025509745
688	Estimating the Size of Generalized Transitive Closures	1989	VLDB	0.00018134733
762	Query Size Estimation by Adaptive Sampling (Extended Abstract)	1990	PODS	0.00017036868
783	Random Sampling from Hash Files	1990	SIGMOD	0.00016704834
1,255	Fixed-Precision Estimation of Join Selectivity	1993	PODS	0.00013024064

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6,493	Joins on Samples: A Theoretical Guide for Practitioners	2020	VLDB	5.0424713e-05
762	Query Size Estimation by Adaptive Sampling (Extended Abstract)	1990	PODS	0.00017036868
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