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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
12163
Venue
VLDB
Year
2019
Pagerank
9.0606664e-05
Overall Rank
2,161 | 85.18%
DOI
10.14778/3297753.3297761

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@article{abuzaid_vldb19,
        title = {{DIFF: A Relational Interface for Large-Scale Data Explanation}},
        author = {Abuzaid, Firas and Kraft, Peter and Suri, Sahaana and Gan, Edward and Xu, Eric and Shenoy, Atul and Ananthanarayan, Asvin and Sheu, John and Meijer, Erik and Wu, Xi and Naughton, Jeff and Bailis, Peter and Zaharia, Matei},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '19},
        volume = {12},
        number = {4},
        pages = {419--432},
        doi = {10.14778/3297753.3297761},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3297753.3297761},
        year = {2019}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 19 of 19 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
2,584 Complaint-driven Training Data Debugging for Query 2.0 2020 SIGMOD 8.3783546e-05
4,876 XInsight: eXplainable Data Analysis Through The Lens of Causality 2023 SIGMOD 6.4687705e-05
5,131 Enabling SQL-based Training Data Debugging for Federated Learning 2022 VLDB 6.3537809e-05
5,396 Putting Things into Context: Rich Explanations for Query Answers using Join Graphs 2021 SIGMOD 6.2329373e-05
6,884 Explaining Inference Queries with Bayesian Optimization 2021 VLDB 5.7465524e-05
7,739 Video-zilla: An Indexing Layer for Large-Scale Video Analytics 2022 SIGMOD 5.5553554e-05
7,977 Interactive Query Explanations Using Fine Grained Provenance 2022 SIGMOD 5.5152578e-05
8,737 Sommelier: Curating DNN Models for the Masses 2022 SIGMOD 5.3766157e-05
8,859 Complaint-Driven Training Data Debugging at Interactive Speeds 2022 SIGMOD 5.356561e-05
8,888 TabEE: Tabular Embeddings Explanations 2024 SIGMOD 5.3512451e-05
9,713 TSExplain: Surfacing Evolving Explanations for Time Series 2021 SIGMOD 5.2342614e-05
10,001 Reptile: Aggregation-level Explanations for Hierarchical Data 2022 SIGMOD 5.1814573e-05
10,002 COMPARE: Accelerating Groupwise Comparison in Relational Databases for Data Analytics 2021 VLDB 5.1814573e-05
10,557 Database Views as Explanations for Relational Deep Learning 2026 VLDB 5.093636e-05
11,098 SDEcho: Efficient Explanation of Aggregated Sequence Difference 2025 VLDB 5.093636e-05
11,109 FaDE: More Than a Million What-ifs Per Second 2025 VLDB 5.093636e-05
11,582 BABOONS: Black-Box Optimization of Data Summaries in Natural Language 2022 VLDB 5.093636e-05
11,590 Automated Relational Data Explanation using External Semantic Knowledge 2022 VLDB 5.093636e-05
11,824 Leveraging Organizational Resources to Adapt Models to New Data Modalities 2020 VLDB 5.093636e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 31 of 31 cited papers.

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

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
12 C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS 2005 VLDB 0.00069513174
24 Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark 2015 SIGMOD 0.00054865648
27 Fast Algorithms for Mining Association Rules 1994 VLDB 0.00052255472
51 Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets 2010 VLDB 0.0004291425
53 Eddies: Continuously Adaptive Query Processing 2000 SIGMOD 0.00041071971
89 On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results 1991 SIGMOD 0.00035031529
104 Improved Query Performance with Variant Indexes 1997 SIGMOD 0.00033932213
159 CORDS: Automatic Discovery of Correlations and Soft Functional Dependencies 2004 SIGMOD 0.00028129426
186 The Vertica Analytic Database: C-Store 7 Years Later 2012 VLDB 0.00026182534
191 Scorpion: Explaining Away Outliers in Aggregate Queries 2013 VLDB 0.00026096009
290 An Overview of Query Optimization in Relational Systems 1998 PODS 0.0002227038
321 Worst-Case Optimal Join Algorithms: Techniques, Results, and Open Problems 2018 PODS 0.00021283186
330 Impala: A Modern, Open-Source SQL Engine for Hadoop 2015 CIDR 0.0002104801
663 A Formal Approach to Finding Explanations for Database Queries 2014 SIGMOD 0.00015174751
715 Learning Generalized Linear Models Over Normalized Data 2015 SIGMOD 0.00014655327
764 To Join or Not to Join? Thinking Twice about Joins before Feature Selection 2016 SIGMOD 0.00014226652
798 DBSherlock: A Performance Diagnostic Tool for Transactional Databases 2016 SIGMOD 0.00013919795
829 Proactive Re-Optimization 2005 SIGMOD 0.00013769838
1,235 Towards Linear Algebra over Normalized Data 2017 VLDB 0.00011548457
1,242 Druid: A Real-time Analytical Data Store 2014 SIGMOD 0.00011516162
1,265 An Experimental Comparison of Thirteen Relational Equi-Joins in Main Memory 2016 SIGMOD 0.00011415709
1,286 Adaptive Optimization of Very Large Join Queries 2018 SIGMOD 0.00011320736
1,694 PerfXplain: Debugging MapReduce Job Performance 2012 VLDB 9.9953156e-05
1,792 MacroBase: Prioritizing Attention in Fast Data 2017 SIGMOD 9.7436856e-05
1,943 Causality and Explanations in Databases 2014 VLDB 9.440636e-05
2,759 Data X-Ray: A Diagnostic Tool for Data Errors 2015 SIGMOD 8.1577506e-05
3,617 Scalable Computation of Acyclic Joins (Extended Abstract) 2006 PODS 7.2557398e-05
4,392 Multi-Structural Databases 2005 PODS 6.7288249e-05
6,452 Efficient Implementation of Large-Scale Multi-Structural Databases 2005 VLDB 5.8751532e-05
7,403 Feature Selection in Enterprise Analytics: A Demonstration using an R-based Data Analytics System 2013 VLDB 5.6249895e-05
11,962 Prioritizing Attention in Fast Data: Principles and Promise 2017 CIDR 5.093636e-05
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