Answering Why-not Questions on Reverse Top-k Queries

Summary: Formalizes why-not questions for reverse top-k queries and introduces WQRTQ, a unified framework for diagnosing missing weight vectors in mono- and bichromatic settings. Proposes three refinement strategies—modify q; modify Wm and k; or modify all—aimed at minimum-penalty inclusion of Wm, with extensive experiments. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 11186
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2015
Pagerank: 7.5625111e-05
Overall Rank: 3,100 | 78.46%
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
5,839	Why Not Yet: Fixing a Top-k Ranking that Is Not Fair to Individuals	2023	VLDB	5.3073497e-05
6,204	Maximum Rank Query	2015	VLDB	5.1547199e-05
6,572	EFQ: Why-Not Answer Polynomials in Action	2015	VLDB	5.0010375e-05
8,142	Erebus: Explaining the Outputs of Data Streaming Queries	2023	VLDB	4.5724134e-05
8,154	Why Not Match: On Explanations of Event Pattern Queries	2021	SIGMOD	4.5708988e-05
8,581	Geometric Approaches for Top-k Queries	2017	VLDB	4.4874332e-05
8,812	Creating Top Ranking Options in the Continuous Option and Preference Space	2019	VLDB	4.4397776e-05
8,823	Determining the Impact Regions of Competing Options in Preference Space	2017	SIGMOD	4.4372904e-05
9,754	On m-Impact Regions and Standing Top-k Influence Problems	2021	SIGMOD	4.2856385e-05
11,369	tau-LevelIndex: Towards Efficient Query Processing in Continuous Preference Space	2022	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
11,596	SPARQL Rewriting: Towards Desired Results	2020	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
11,876	YASK: A Why-Not Question Answering Engine for Spatial Keyword Query Services	2016	VLDB	4.1905499e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 15 of 15 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
257	Making Database Systems Usable	2007	SIGMOD	0.00030237174
428	The Onion Technique: Indexing for Linear Optimization Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.0002349868
464	PREFER: A System for the Efficient Execution of Multiparametric Ranked Queries	2001	SIGMOD	0.00022476798
487	Why Not?	2009	SIGMOD	0.00022030123
561	An Annotation Management System for Relational Databases	2004	VLDB	0.00020099434
593	Lineage Tracing for General Data Warehouse Transformations	2001	VLDB	0.0001952223
653	On the Provenance of Non-Answers to Queries over Extracted Data	2008	VLDB	0.00018616975
1,124	How to ConQueR Why-Not Questions	2010	SIGMOD	0.00013832959
2,565	Explaining Missing Answers to SPJUA Queries	2010	VLDB	8.5307653e-05
2,794	Artemis: A System for Analyzing Missing Answers	2009	VLDB	8.1164685e-05
2,936	Answering Top-k Queries Using Views	2006	VLDB	7.8579393e-05
2,967	Processing a Large Number of Continuous Preference Top-k Queries	2012	SIGMOD	7.7975455e-05
3,447	Towards Robust Indexing for Ranked Queries	2006	VLDB	7.082382e-05
5,024	Identifying the Most Influential Data Objects with Reverse Top-k Queries	2010	VLDB	5.747078e-05
5,074	Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for Reverse Top-k Queries	2013	SIGMOD	5.7113169e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,634	Monochromatic and Bichromatic Reverse Skyline Search over Uncertain Databases	2008	SIGMOD	6.8949444e-05
3,190	Top-k Queries on Uncertain Data: On Score Distribution and Typical Answers	2009	SIGMOD	7.413338e-05
6,219	Reverse k-Ranks Query	2014	VLDB	5.1458862e-05
5,074	Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for Reverse Top-k Queries	2013	SIGMOD	5.7113169e-05
5,839	Why Not Yet: Fixing a Top-k Ranking that Is Not Fair to Individuals	2023	VLDB	5.3073497e-05
6,378	Exact Processing of Uncertain Top-k Queries in Multi-criteria Settings	2018	VLDB	5.0844506e-05
1,124	How to ConQueR Why-Not Questions	2010	SIGMOD	0.00013832959
2,936	Answering Top-k Queries Using Views	2006	VLDB	7.8579393e-05
8,148	Evaluating Top-k Queries with Inconsistency Degrees	2020	VLDB	4.5717374e-05
12,143	Answering Top-k Queries Over a Mixture of Attractive and Repulsive Dimensions	2012	VLDB	4.1905499e-05