Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation

Summary: Deep autoregressive models for unsupervised cardinality estimation, no independence assumptions. Monte Carlo integration over autoregressors enables range queries across dimensions, delivering single-digit tail error and up to 90x gains vs baselines. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 12320
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 0.00019092557
Overall Rank: 401 | 97.26%
DOI: 10.14778/3368289.3368294

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Zongheng Yang (University of California Berkeley)
2. Eric Liang (University of California Berkeley)
3. Amog Kamsetty (University of California Berkeley)
4. Chenggang Wu (University of California Berkeley)
5. Yan Duan (Covariant)
6. Xi Chen (Covariant; University of California Berkeley)
7. Pieter Abbeel (Covariant; University of California Berkeley)
8. Joseph M. Hellerstein (University of California Berkeley)
9. Sanjay Krishnan (University of Chicago)
10. Ion Stoica (University of California Berkeley)

BibTeX Citation

@article{yang_vldb20,
        title = {{Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation}},
        author = {Yang, Zongheng and Liang, Eric and Kamsetty, Amog and Wu, Chenggang and Duan, Yan and Chen, Xi and Abbeel, Pieter and Hellerstein, Joseph M. and Krishnan, Sanjay and Stoica, Ion},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '20},
        volume = {13},
        number = {3},
        pages = {279--292},
        doi = {10.14778/3368289.3368294},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3368289.3368294},
        year = {2020}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 3 of 103 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
11,160	Sub-optimal Join Order Identification with L1-error	2024	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
11,413	SH2O: Efficient Data Access for Work-Sharing Databases	2023	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
11,539	Juggler: Autonomous Cost Optimization and Performance Prediction of Big Data Applications	2022	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 21 of 21 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1	Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System	1979	SIGMOD	0.0024089429
18	How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?	2016	VLDB	0.00059284255
35	Improved Histograms for Selectivity Estimation of Range Predicates	1996	SIGMOD	0.00048481081
54	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.00040810225
84	Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning	2019	CIDR	0.00035838391
100	LEO - DB2's LEarning Optimizer	2001	VLDB	0.00034385207
101	Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption	1997	VLDB	0.00034376651
154	Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer	2019	VLDB	0.00028726181
222	Adaptive Selectivity Estimation Using Query Feedback	1994	SIGMOD	0.00024193708
280	Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models	2001	SIGMOD	0.00022454217
365	STHoles: A Multidimensional Workload-Aware Histogram	2001	SIGMOD	0.00020041735
692	Independence is Good: Dependency-Based Histogram Synopses for High-Dimensional Data	2001	SIGMOD	0.00014919816
694	Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling	2017	CIDR	0.00014911698
697	Selectivity Estimation for Range Predicates using Lightweight Models	2019	VLDB	0.00014888851
1,071	Lightweight Graphical Models for Selectivity Estimation Without Independence Assumptions	2011	VLDB	0.00012322342
1,093	Maximizing the Output Rate of Multi-Way Join Queries over Streaming Information Sources	2003	VLDB	0.00012218435
1,170	QuickSel: Quick Selectivity Learning with Mixture Models	2020	SIGMOD	0.00011827259
1,468	Towards a Learning Optimizer for Shared Clouds	2019	VLDB	0.00010686496
1,503	Self-Tuning, GPU-Accelerated Kernel Density Models for Multidimensional Selectivity Estimation	2015	SIGMOD	0.000105564
2,203	Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models	2017	VLDB	8.9610447e-05
7,388	Synopses for Query Optimization: A Space-Complexity Perspective	2004	PODS	5.6268292e-05

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