FACE: A Normalizing Flow based Cardinality Estimator

Summary: FACE: a data-driven cardinality estimator leveraging Normalizing Flows to learn a continuous joint distribution over relational attributes and estimate cardinalities from model density via Monte Carlo. Adds dequantization and LIKE encoding/indexing for strings; much higher accuracy with similar latency and model size. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 12945
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2022
Pagerank: 6.0953507e-05
Overall Rank: 4,543 | 68.43%
DOI: 10.14778/3485450.3485458

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 31 of 31 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,729	Cost-based or Learning-based? A Hybrid Query Optimizer for Query Plan Selection	2022	VLDB	6.8078013e-05
3,992	FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries	2023	SIGMOD	6.5519369e-05
5,072	Learned Index: A Comprehensive Experimental Evaluation	2023	VLDB	5.7121108e-05
5,289	LearnedSQLGen: Constraint-aware SQL Generation using Reinforcement Learning	2022	SIGMOD	5.5790771e-05
5,339	LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization	2023	VLDB	5.5596755e-05
5,373	Fine-Grained Modeling and Optimization for Intelligent Resource Management in Big Data Processing	2022	VLDB	5.5410059e-05
5,405	ALECE: An Attention-based Learned Cardinality Estimator for SPJ Queries on Dynamic Workloads	2024	VLDB	5.5243727e-05
5,978	SafeBound: A Practical System for Generating Cardinality Bounds	2023	SIGMOD	5.2424396e-05
7,118	ASM: Harmonizing Autoregressive Model, Sampling, and Multi-dimensional Statistics Merging for Cardinality Estimation	2024	SIGMOD	4.8204951e-05
7,180	Coresets over Multiple Tables for Feature-rich and Data-efficient Machine Learning	2023	VLDB	4.8032775e-05
7,220	Speeding Up End-to-end Query Execution via Learning-based Progressive Cardinality Estimation	2023	SIGMOD	4.7926382e-05
7,408	CommunityAF: An Example-based Community Search Method via Autoregressive Flow	2023	VLDB	4.7325545e-05
7,703	AOP: Automated and Interactive LLM Pipeline Orchestration for Answering Complex Queries	2025	CIDR	4.668568e-05
8,095	Grep: A Graph Learning Based Database Partitioning System	2023	SIGMOD	4.5837691e-05
8,585	A Spark Optimizer for Adaptive, Fine-Grained Parameter Tuning	2024	VLDB	4.4856045e-05
8,834	ByteCard: Enhancing ByteDance’s Data Warehouse with Learned Cardinality Estimation	2024	SIGMOD	4.4351469e-05
9,215	PACE: Poisoning Attacks on Learned Cardinality Estimation	2024	SIGMOD	4.3679174e-05
9,372	FEBench: A Benchmark for Real-Time Relational Data Feature Extraction	2023	VLDB	4.3461481e-05
9,690	Selectivity Estimation for Queries Containing Predicates over Set-Valued Attributes	2023	SIGMOD	4.2994116e-05
9,725	Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning	2025	SIGMOD	4.290223e-05
9,824	Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement	2025	SIGMOD	4.2710095e-05
9,845	Path-centric Cardinality Estimation for Subgraph Matching	2025	VLDB	4.2680295e-05
9,947	SSCard: Substring Cardinality Estimation using Suffix Tree-Guided Learned FM-Index	2026	SIGMOD	4.2391999e-05
10,219	Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking	2026	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
10,422	OpenMLDB: A Real-Time Relational Data Feature Computation System for Online ML	2025	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
10,491	FAAQP: Fast and Accurate Approximate Query Processing based on Bitmap-augmented Sum-Product Network	2025	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
10,641	AQETuner: Reliable Query-level Configuration Tuning for Analytical Query Engines	2025	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
10,863	Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges	2025	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
10,872	LEAP: A Low-cost Spark SQL Query Optimizer using Pairwise Comparison	2025	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
10,876	LASER: Buffer-Aware Learned Query Scheduling in Master-Standby Databases	2025	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
11,192	Efficient and Effective Cardinality Estimation for Skyline Family	2023	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 22 of 22 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	0.0040465394
63	Improved Histograms for Selectivity Estimation of Range Predicates	1996	SIGMOD	0.00063595699
71	How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?	2016	VLDB	0.00059446482
203	Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning	2019	CIDR	0.00034868567
606	DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries!	2020	VLDB	0.00019251186
752	Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation	2020	VLDB	0.00017138049
804	An End-to-End Learning-based Cost Estimator	2020	VLDB	0.0001643674
905	NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables	2021	VLDB	0.00015423174
1,104	Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling	2017	CIDR	0.0001398479
1,239	Selectivity Estimation for Range Predicates using Lightweight Models	2019	VLDB	0.00013091459
1,372	Random Sampling over Joins Revisited	2018	SIGMOD	0.0001233325
1,699	Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation?	2021	VLDB	0.00010848882
2,167	Self-Tuning, GPU-Accelerated Kernel Density Models for Multidimensional Selectivity Estimation	2015	SIGMOD	9.3879598e-05
2,364	Deep Learning Models for Selectivity Estimation of Multi-Attribute Queries	2020	SIGMOD	8.955077e-05
2,769	FLAT: Fast, Lightweight and Accurate Method for Cardinality Estimation	2021	VLDB	8.1512848e-05
2,971	Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models	2017	VLDB	7.7935535e-05
3,455	Learned Cardinality Estimation: A Design Space Exploration and A Comparative Evaluation	2022	VLDB	7.0760196e-05
3,466	AI Meets Database: AI4DB and DB4AI	2021	SIGMOD	7.0645718e-05
3,580	Query Performance Prediction for Concurrent Queries using Graph Embedding	2020	VLDB	6.9460425e-05
4,151	openGauss: An Autonomous Database System	2021	VLDB	6.4020605e-05
5,477	Learned Cardinality Estimation for Similarity Queries	2021	SIGMOD	5.4856699e-05
5,787	Machine Learning for Databases	2021	VLDB	5.3256401e-05

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3,492	Fauce: Fast and Accurate Deep Ensembles with Uncertainty for Cardinality Estimation	2021	VLDB	7.0435484e-05
905	NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables	2021	VLDB	0.00015423174
804	An End-to-End Learning-based Cost Estimator	2020	VLDB	0.0001643674
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