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DIFF: A Relational Interface for Large-Scale Data Explanation

Summary: DIFF introduces a relational aggregation operator that unifies explanation engines with declarative SQL for large-scale analytics. Implemented in MB SQL (MacroBase), with single-node and distributed deployments, it preserves semantics, enables optimizations, and yields up to 10x speedups in production. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID
11976
Venue
VLDB
Year
2019
Pagerank
9.4117885e-05
Overall Rank
2,158 | 85.01%
DOI
10.14778/3297753.3297761

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
2,759 Complaint-driven Training Data Debugging for Query 2.0 2020 SIGMOD 8.1646193e-05
5,227 Enabling SQL-based Training Data Debugging for Federated Learning 2022 VLDB 5.6156523e-05
5,321 XInsight: eXplainable Data Analysis Through The Lens of Causality 2023 SIGMOD 5.5676564e-05
5,706 Putting Things into Context: Rich Explanations for Query Answers using Join Graphs 2021 SIGMOD 5.3633001e-05
6,779 Explaining Inference Queries with Bayesian Optimization 2021 VLDB 4.9232829e-05
7,556 Interactive Query Explanations Using Fine Grained Provenance 2022 SIGMOD 4.7072603e-05
7,922 Video-zilla: An Indexing Layer for Large-Scale Video Analytics 2022 SIGMOD 4.6114931e-05
8,531 Sommelier: Curating DNN Models for the Masses 2022 SIGMOD 4.4893996e-05
8,853 Complaint-Driven Training Data Debugging at Interactive Speeds 2022 SIGMOD 4.4308213e-05
8,862 TabEE: Tabular Embeddings Explanations 2024 SIGMOD 4.4289485e-05
9,534 TSExplain: Surfacing Evolving Explanations for Time Series 2021 SIGMOD 4.3228164e-05
9,849 Reptile: Aggregation-level Explanations for Hierarchical Data 2022 SIGMOD 4.2680295e-05
9,850 COMPARE: Accelerating Groupwise Comparison in Relational Databases for Data Analytics 2021 VLDB 4.2680295e-05
10,269 Database Views as Explanations for Relational Deep Learning 2026 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
10,879 SDEcho: Efficient Explanation of Aggregated Sequence Difference 2025 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
10,890 FaDE: More Than a Million What-ifs Per Second 2025 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
11,386 BABOONS: Black-Box Optimization of Data Summaries in Natural Language 2022 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
11,394 Automated Relational Data Explanation using External Semantic Knowledge 2022 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
11,633 Leveraging Organizational Resources to Adapt Models to New Data Modalities 2020 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 30 of 30 cited papers.

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

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
20 C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS 2005 VLDB 0.00086163998
36 Fast Algorithms for Mining Association Rules 1994 VLDB 0.00076114894
66 Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark 2015 SIGMOD 0.00061707583
100 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.00050033475
109 Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets 2010 VLDB 0.00048217028
116 Eddies: Continuously Adaptive Query Processing 2000 SIGMOD 0.00046191288
121 Improved Query Performance with Variant Indexes 1997 SIGMOD 0.00045429472
213 Scorpion: Explaining Away Outliers in Aggregate Queries 2013 VLDB 0.0003371037
224 CORDS: Automatic Discovery of Correlations and Soft Functional Dependencies 2004 SIGMOD 0.00032743209
310 The Vertica Analytic Database: C-Store 7 Years Later 2012 VLDB 0.0002815547
454 An Overview of Query Optimization in Relational Systems 1998 PODS 0.00022796106
476 Impala: A Modern, Open-Source SQL Engine for Hadoop 2015 CIDR 0.00022216002
901 To Join or Not to Join? Thinking Twice about Joins before Feature Selection 2016 SIGMOD 0.00015462938
943 A Formal Approach to Finding Explanations for Database Queries 2014 SIGMOD 0.00015140995
1,024 DBSherlock: A Performance Diagnostic Tool for Transactional Databases 2016 SIGMOD 0.00014601525
1,172 Learning Generalized Linear Models Over Normalized Data 2015 SIGMOD 0.00013504249
1,268 Proactive Re-Optimization 2005 SIGMOD 0.00012914584
1,283 Towards Linear Algebra over Normalized Data 2017 VLDB 0.00012826013
1,533 PerfXplain: Debugging MapReduce Job Performance 2012 VLDB 0.00011462982
1,588 Druid: A Real-time Analytical Data Store 2014 SIGMOD 0.00011232949
1,621 Adaptive Optimization of Very Large Join Queries 2018 SIGMOD 0.00011105663
1,800 An Experimental Comparison of Thirteen Relational Equi-Joins in Main Memory 2016 SIGMOD 0.00010494121
2,129 MacroBase: Prioritizing Attention in Fast Data 2017 SIGMOD 9.4799835e-05
2,400 Causality and Explanations in Databases 2014 VLDB 8.884178e-05
3,107 Data X-Ray: A Diagnostic Tool for Data Errors 2015 SIGMOD 7.5549177e-05
3,519 Scalable Computation of Acyclic Joins (Extended Abstract) 2006 PODS 7.0181381e-05
4,690 Multi-Structural Databases 2005 PODS 5.9898251e-05
6,368 Efficient Implementation of Large-Scale Multi-Structural Databases 2005 VLDB 5.0886655e-05
7,270 Feature Selection in Enterprise Analytics: A Demonstration using an R-based Data Analytics System 2013 VLDB 4.776491e-05
11,764 Prioritizing Attention in Fast Data: Principles and Promise 2017 CIDR 4.1905499e-05
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Overall Rank Paper Year Venue Pagerank
11,283 Explaining Differentially Private Query Results With DPXPlain 2023 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
943 A Formal Approach to Finding Explanations for Database Queries 2014 SIGMOD 0.00015140995
10,879 SDEcho: Efficient Explanation of Aggregated Sequence Difference 2025 VLDB 4.1905499e-05
7,556 Interactive Query Explanations Using Fine Grained Provenance 2022 SIGMOD 4.7072603e-05
9,953 Optimizing Differentially-Maintained Recursive Queries on Dynamic Graphs 2022 VLDB 4.2360271e-05
6,468 Explain3D: Explaining Disagreements in Disjoint Datasets 2019 VLDB 5.0448709e-05
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9,850 COMPARE: Accelerating Groupwise Comparison in Relational Databases for Data Analytics 2021 VLDB 4.2680295e-05