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Flow-Loss: Learning Cardinality Estimates That Matter

Summary: Flow-Loss trains cardinality estimators against optimizer plan costs via a flow-routing formulation over plan graphs, rather than average Q-Error. On the 16K-query CEB benchmark, it yields better runtimes and markedly stronger generalization to unseen templates despite worse estimation accuracy. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID
12570
Venue
VLDB
Year
2021
Pagerank
9.5717543e-05
Overall Rank
1,876 | 87.14%
DOI
10.14778/3476249.3476259

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@article{negi_vldb21,
        title = {{Flow-Loss: Learning Cardinality Estimates That Matter}},
        author = {Negi, Parimarjan and Marcus, Ryan and Kipf, Andreas and Mao, Hongzi and Tatbul, Nesime and Kraska, Tim and Alizadeh, Mohammad},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '21},
        volume = {14},
        number = {11},
        pages = {2019--2032},
        doi = {10.14778/3476249.3476259},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3476249.3476259},
        year = {2021}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 55 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
1,122 Cardinality Estimation in DBMS: A Comprehensive Benchmark Evaluation 2022 VLDB 0.0001209124
2,543 Learned Cardinality Estimation: An In-depth Study 2022 SIGMOD 8.4445934e-05
2,620 Fauce: Fast and Accurate Deep Ensembles with Uncertainty for Cardinality Estimation 2021 VLDB 8.3363963e-05
2,991 FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries 2023 SIGMOD 7.8880723e-05
3,338 Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads 2023 VLDB 7.5068221e-05
4,349 ALECE: An Attention-based Learned Cardinality Estimator for SPJ Queries on Dynamic Workloads 2024 VLDB 6.7504619e-05
4,434 LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 6.7079088e-05
4,470 Kepler: Robust Learning for Faster Parametric Query Optimization 2023 SIGMOD 6.6817353e-05
4,929 AutoSteer: Learned Query Optimization for Any SQL Database 2023 VLDB 6.4423294e-05
5,010 Analyzing the Impact of Cardinality Estimation on Execution Plans in Microsoft SQL Server 2023 VLDB 6.4023732e-05
5,388 Fine-Grained Modeling and Optimization for Intelligent Resource Management in Big Data Processing 2022 VLDB 6.2362811e-05
5,576 SafeBound: A Practical System for Generating Cardinality Bounds 2023 SIGMOD 6.1663946e-05
5,712 Sample-Efficient Cardinality Estimation Using Geometric Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 6.1123894e-05
5,974 Towards instance-optimized data systems 2021 VLDB 6.0230488e-05
6,357 A Unified Transferable Model for ML-Enhanced DBMS 2022 CIDR 5.9020843e-05
6,434 Yannakakis+: Practical Acyclic Query Evaluation with Theoretical Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 5.8799421e-05
6,543 Speeding Up End-to-end Query Execution via Learning-based Progressive Cardinality Estimation 2023 SIGMOD 5.8461929e-05
6,704 ASM: Harmonizing Autoregressive Model, Sampling, and Multi-dimensional Statistics Merging for Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.797374e-05
6,997 E2ETune: End-to-End Knob Tuning via Fine-tuned Generative Language Model 2025 VLDB 5.7300324e-05
7,193 dbET: Execution Time Distribution-based Plan Selection 2023 SIGMOD 5.6770249e-05
7,661 Machine Learning for Cloud Data Systems: the Progress so far and the Path Forward 2021 VLDB 5.5736026e-05
8,040 PerfGuard: Deploying ML-for-Systems without Performance Regressions, Almost! 2021 VLDB 5.5018396e-05
8,074 Parachute: Single-Pass Bi-Directional Information Passing 2025 VLDB 5.4929961e-05
8,163 Learned Offline Query Planning via Bayesian Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 5.4751517e-05
8,615 A Spark Optimizer for Adaptive, Fine-Grained Parameter Tuning 2024 VLDB 5.4005602e-05
9,042 DPconv: Super-Polynomially Faster Join Ordering 2024 SIGMOD 5.3256042e-05
9,428 LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.2709145e-05
9,465 Are Joins over LSM-trees Ready? Take RocksDB as an Example 2025 VLDB 5.2634238e-05
9,587 Machine Unlearning in Learned Databases: An Experimental Analysis 2024 SIGMOD 5.2525104e-05
9,601 Low Rank Learning for Offline Query Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 5.2487799e-05
9,626 Spatial Query Optimization With Learning 2024 VLDB 5.2434488e-05
9,724 Approximate Sketches 2024 SIGMOD 5.2308295e-05
9,920 Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2025 VLDB 5.1955087e-05
9,958 A Practical Theory of Generalization in Selectivity Learning 2025 VLDB 5.1879626e-05
9,971 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 5.1845938e-05
10,016 Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections 2022 VLDB 5.1764556e-05
10,066 Check Out the Big Brain on BRAD: Simplifying Cloud Data Processing with Learned Automated Data Meshes 2023 VLDB 5.1643809e-05
10,106 How to Optimize SQL Queries? A Comparison Between Split, Holistic, and Hybrid Approaches 2025 VLDB 5.1435736e-05
10,108 An Elephant Under The Microscope: Analyzing The Interaction Of Optimizer Components In PostgreSQL 2025 SIGMOD 5.1347137e-05
10,196 Are Learned DBMS Components Robust to Workload Drift?: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
10,272 NeurBench: A Benchmark Suite for Learned Database Components with Drift Modeling: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
10,342 Approximate Query Processing under Updates 2026 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
10,401 SEFRQO: A Self-Evolving Fine-Tuned RAG-Based Query Optimizer 2026 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
10,492 Reqo: A Comprehensive Learning-Based Cost Model for Robust and Explainable Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
10,508 Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking 2026 SIGMOD 5.093636e-05
10,513 LIO: A lightweight and interpretable query optimizer based on an evolutionary forest 2026 VLDB 5.093636e-05
10,515 Sample-based Distinct Cardinality Estimation for Multiple Attributes in Multi-Dataset Queries 2026 VLDB 5.093636e-05
10,559 OBELISK: Efficient Offline Query Planning with Bayesian Optimization-Informed Language Model Reasoning 2026 VLDB 5.093636e-05
10,586 TATA: An Efficient Framework for Task Transfer in Query Plan Representation 2026 VLDB 5.093636e-05
10,875 Data-Agnostic Cardinality Learning from Imperfect Workloads 2025 VLDB 5.093636e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 28 of 28 cited papers.

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

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
18 How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2016 VLDB 0.00059284255
84 Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 0.00035838391
101 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00034376651
154 Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer 2019 VLDB 0.00028726181
168 Wavelet-Based Histograms for Selectivity Estimation 1998 SIGMOD 0.00027541029
280 Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models 2001 SIGMOD 0.00022454217
323 DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries! 2020 VLDB 0.00021264788
365 STHoles: A Multidimensional Workload-Aware Histogram 2001 SIGMOD 0.00020041735
388 Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors 2009 VLDB 0.00019410042
401 Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation 2020 VLDB 0.00019092557
465 An End-to-End Learning-based Cost Estimator 2020 VLDB 0.0001803934
513 NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables 2021 VLDB 0.00017190574
593 Wander Join: Online Aggregation via Random Walks 2016 SIGMOD 0.00016027871
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
802 Random Sampling over Joins Revisited 2018 SIGMOD 0.00013907725
1,061 Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation? 2021 VLDB 0.00012369764
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
1,499 Pessimistic Cardinality Estimation: Tighter Upper Bounds for Intermediate Join Cardinalities 2019 SIGMOD 0.00010564536
1,573 Deep Learning Models for Selectivity Estimation of Multi-Attribute Queries 2020 SIGMOD 0.00010328171
1,712 SkinnerDB: Regret-Bounded Query Evaluation via Reinforcement Learning 2019 SIGMOD 9.9492299e-05
2,203 Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models 2017 VLDB 8.9610447e-05
3,051 Towards a Hands-Free Query Optimizer through Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 7.8121919e-05
3,070 Accurate Summary-based Cardinality Estimation Through the Lens of Cardinality Estimation Graphs 2022 VLDB 7.7900444e-05
3,162 Efficiently Approximating Selectivity Functions using Low Overhead Regression Models 2020 VLDB 7.6785856e-05
3,213 Estimating Cardinalities with Deep Sketches 2019 SIGMOD 7.6328677e-05
3,959 Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering 2021 CIDR 6.9879431e-05
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