Query From Examples: An Iterative, Data-Driven Approach to Query Construction

Summary: Query From Examples (QFE) enables non-experts to iteratively construct SQL queries from input–output examples. It avoids synthetic distinguishers and instead uses near-original D,R pairs to minimize user effort, evaluated on SQLShare data. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 11320
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2015
Pagerank: 0.00011740132
Overall Rank: 1,192 | 91.83%
DOI: 10.14778/2831360.2831373

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Hao Li (National University of Singapore)
2. Chee-Yong Chan (National University of Singapore)
3. David Maier (Portland State University)

BibTeX Citation

@article{li_vldb15,
        title = {{Query From Examples: An Iterative, Data-Driven Approach to Query Construction}},
        author = {Li, Hao and Chan, Chee-Yong and Maier, David},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '15},
        volume = {8},
        number = {13},
        pages = {2158--2169},
        doi = {10.14778/2831360.2831373},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/2831360.2831373},
        year = {2015}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 23 of 23 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,048	Duoquest: A Dual-Specification System for Expressive SQL Queries	2020	SIGMOD	9.2560185e-05
2,631	FastQRE: Fast Query Reverse Engineering	2018	SIGMOD	8.3231158e-05
3,300	Reverse Engineering Aggregation Queries	2017	VLDB	7.5412976e-05
3,677	Example-Driven Query Intent Discovery: Abductive Reasoning using Semantic Similarity	2019	VLDB	7.2076465e-05
4,420	Optimization for Active Learning-based Interactive Database Exploration	2019	VLDB	6.7132724e-05
4,733	Interactive Query Synthesis from Input-Output Examples	2017	SIGMOD	6.5335361e-05
5,859	Active Learning of GAV Schema Mappings	2018	PODS	6.0637959e-05
6,200	New Trends on Exploratory Methods for Data Analytics	2017	VLDB	5.9457282e-05
7,093	DICE: Data Discovery by Example	2021	VLDB	5.7056625e-05
7,880	Learning Over Dirty Data Without Cleaning	2020	SIGMOD	5.5244204e-05
8,358	Exploring the Data Wilderness through Examples	2019	SIGMOD	5.4446041e-05
8,362	EQUI-VOCAL: Synthesizing Queries for Compositional Video Events from Limited User Interactions	2023	VLDB	5.4432545e-05
8,692	FormaT5: Abstention and Examples for Conditional Table Formatting with Natural Language	2024	VLDB	5.3838716e-05
8,945	Generation of Training Examples for Tabular Natural Language Inference	2023	SIGMOD	5.3480421e-05
8,987	Constructing Expressive Relational Queries with Dual-Specification Synthesis	2020	CIDR	5.3387464e-05
9,020	Data-Driven Insight Synthesis for Multi-Dimensional Data	2024	VLDB	5.3306775e-05
9,368	SQuID: Semantic Similarity-Aware Query Intent Discovery	2018	SIGMOD	5.2778771e-05
9,832	The Data Interaction Game	2018	SIGMOD	5.2124469e-05
10,042	Scalable and Usable Relational Learning With Automatic Language Bias	2021	SIGMOD	5.1708123e-05
10,082	Wred: Workload Reduction for Scalable Index Tuning	2024	SIGMOD	5.1587525e-05
10,486	Qualitative Join Discovery in Data Lakes using Examples	2026	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
11,363	Extremal Fitting Problems for Conjunctive Queries	2023	PODS	5.093636e-05
11,445	Cornet: Learning Table Formatting Rules By Example	2023	VLDB	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6	Pig Latin: A Not-So-Foreign Language for Data Processing	2008	SIGMOD	0.0010686205
846	SnipSuggest: Context-Aware Autocompletion for SQL	2011	VLDB	0.00013658824
1,305	Assisted Querying using Instant-Response Interfaces	2007	SIGMOD	0.00011235196
1,313	Reverse Engineering Complex Join Queries	2013	SIGMOD	0.00011186284
1,506	Query Steering for Interactive Data Exploration	2013	CIDR	0.00010545273
1,751	Sample-Driven Schema Mapping	2012	SIGMOD	9.838446e-05
2,677	Explore-by-Example: An Automatic Query Steering Framework for Interactive Data Exploration	2014	SIGMOD	8.2682753e-05
2,905	SQL QueRIE Recommendations	2010	VLDB	7.9756156e-05
4,074	SPIDER: a Schema mapPIng DEbuggeR	2006	VLDB	6.9232658e-05
4,196	Automatic Example Queries for Ad Hoc Databases	2011	SIGMOD	6.8416684e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	6,627	Schema-free SQL	2014	SIGMOD
2	3,032	Learning to Create Data-Integrating Queries	2008	VLDB
3	4,721	QueryVis: Logic-based Diagrams help Users Understand Complicated SQL Queries Faster	2020	SIGMOD
4	8,970	Understanding Queries by Conditional Instances	2022	SIGMOD
5	5,438	PATSQL: Efficient Synthesis of SQL Queries from Example Tables with Quick Inference of Projected Columns	2021	VLDB
6	1,030	Data-Driven Understanding and Refinement of Schema Mappings	2001	SIGMOD
7	5,132	Facilitating SQL Query Composition and Analysis	2020	SIGMOD
8	663	A Formal Approach to Finding Explanations for Database Queries	2014	SIGMOD
9	12,221	Mirror mirror on the wall, which query's fairest of them all?	2013	CIDR
10	4,196	Automatic Example Queries for Ad Hoc Databases	2011	SIGMOD