I-Rex: An Interactive Relational Query Explainer for SQL
Summary: I-Rex interactively traces SQL evaluation according to query syntax, including nested correlated subqueries, rather than exposing only an execution plan. Extended provenance generates small distinguishing counterexamples to explain incorrect results against reference queries. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)
Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time
Authors
- 1. Zhengjie Miao (Duke University)
- 2. Tiangang Chen (Duke University)
- 3. Alexander Bendeck (Duke University)
- 4. Kevin Day (Duke University)
- 5. Sudeepa Roy (Duke University)
- 6. Jun Yang (Duke University)
BibTeX Citation
@article{miao_vldb20,
title = {{I-Rex: An Interactive Relational Query Explainer for SQL}},
author = {Miao, Zhengjie and Chen, Tiangang and Bendeck, Alexander and Day, Kevin and Roy, Sudeepa and Yang, Jun},
journal = {PVLDB},
series = {{VLDB} '20},
volume = {13},
number = {12},
pages = {2997--3000},
doi = {10.14778/3415478.3415528},
url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3415478.3415528},
year = {2020}
}Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 4 of 4 citing papers.
| Rank | Citing Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6,576 | Toward Interpretable and Actionable Data Analysis with Explanations and Causality | 2022 | VLDB | 5.8364729e-05 |
| 9,846 | QO-Insight: Inspecting Steered Query Optimizers | 2023 | VLDB | 5.2094004e-05 |
| 10,220 | Dialect-Agnostic SQL Parsing via LLM-Based Segmentation | 2026 | SIGMOD | 5.093636e-05 |
| 11,084 | Exploring Exploratory Querying | 2025 | VLDB | 5.093636e-05 |
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)
Showing 2 of 2 cited papers.
Citations counted here include only citations to other VLDB/SIGMOD/CIDR/PODS papers in this database.
| Rank | Cited Paper | Year | Venue | Pagerank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | Provenance Semirings | 2007 | PODS | 0.00059843817 |
| 4,961 | A SQL Debugger Built from Spare Parts: Turning a SQL:1999 Database System into Its Own Debugger | 2015 | SIGMOD | 6.4276648e-05 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7,977 | Interactive Query Explanations Using Fine Grained Provenance | 2022 | SIGMOD |
| 2 | 4,721 | QueryVis: Logic-based Diagrams help Users Understand Complicated SQL Queries Faster | 2020 | SIGMOD |
| 3 | 3,444 | REGAL+: Reverse Engineering SPJA Queries | 2018 | VLDB |
| 4 | 8,970 | Understanding Queries by Conditional Instances | 2022 | SIGMOD |
| 5 | 7,974 | ConEx: A System for Monitoring Queries | 2007 | SIGMOD |
| 6 | 5,873 | QRelX: Generating Meaningful Queries that Provide Cardinality Assurance | 2010 | SIGMOD |
| 7 | 9,241 | Provenance for SQL through Abstract Interpretation: Value-less, but Worthwhile | 2015 | VLDB |
| 8 | 9,767 | TracEx: Understanding and Analyzing Database Traces | 2024 | CIDR |
| 9 | 4,759 | Explaining Wrong Queries Using Small Examples | 2019 | SIGMOD |
| 10 | 11,861 | RATest: Explaining Wrong Relational Queries Using Small Examples | 2019 | SIGMOD |