On Scale Independence for Querying Big Data

Summary: Formalizes scale independence—queries whose needed retrieval size depends on query+access methods, not dataset size—and gives matching upper/lower bounds for deciding it across languages and complexity regimes. Since exact checks are hard and non-syntactic, derives sufficient conditions via access schemas (indexes, constraints, cardinality bounds) and studies scale-independent incremental maintenance and view-based rewrites. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 1626
Venue: PODS
Year: 2014
Pagerank: 5.6074278e-05
Overall Rank: 7,484 | 48.66%
DOI: 10.1145/2594538.2594551

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Wenfei Fan (Beihang University; University of Edinburgh)
2. Floris Geerts (University of Antwerp)
3. Leonid Libkin (University of Edinburgh)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{fan_pods14,
        address = {New York, NY, USA},
        series = {{PODS} '14},
        title = {{On Scale Independence for Querying Big Data}},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2594538.2594551},
        doi = {10.1145/2594538.2594551},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} Symposium on {Principles} of {Database} {Systems}},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        author = {Fan, Wenfei and Geerts, Floris and Libkin, Leonid},
        year = {2014}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 10 of 10 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,108	Approximate Query Processing: No Silver Bullet	2017	SIGMOD	0.00012145154
3,827	Automatic Enforcement of Data Use Policies with DataLawyer	2015	SIGMOD	7.0909359e-05
4,393	Bounded Conjunctive Queries	2014	VLDB	6.7280426e-05
6,841	Querying Big Data by Accessing Small Data	2015	PODS	5.7574257e-05
8,701	Data Driven Approximation with Bounded Resources	2017	VLDB	5.3828806e-05
9,002	An Effective Syntax for Bounded Relational Queries	2016	SIGMOD	5.3346995e-05
11,867	Block as a Value for SQL over NoSQL	2019	VLDB	5.093636e-05
11,990	BEAS: Bounded Evaluation of SQL Queries	2017	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
12,029	Bounded Query Rewriting Using Views	2016	PODS	5.093636e-05
12,032	Logical Aspects of Massively Parallel and Distributed Systems	2016	PODS	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 12 of 12 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
22	Data Integration: A Theoretical Perspective	2002	PODS	0.00056204792
69	Answering Queries Using Views (Extended Abstract)	1995	PODS	0.00038090878
438	DBToaster: Higher-order Delta Processing for Dynamic, Frequently Fresh Views	2012	VLDB	0.00018471721
853	Queries Independent of Updates	1993	VLDB	0.00013587101
954	Parallel Evaluation of Conjunctive Queries	2011	PODS	0.00012997301
1,635	SCADS: Scale-Independent Storage for Social Computing Applications	2009	CIDR	0.00010158805
1,969	PIQL: Success-Tolerant Query Processing in the Cloud	2012	VLDB	9.3749819e-05
2,539	Minimal MapReduce Algorithms	2013	SIGMOD	8.4526595e-05
2,733	Processing First-Order Queries under Limited Access Patterns	2004	PODS	8.1927747e-05
4,250	Generalized Scale Independence Through Incremental Precomputation	2013	SIGMOD	6.8031294e-05
5,617	Relative Information Completeness	2009	PODS	6.1493013e-05
12,294	Making Queries Tractable on Big Data with Preprocessing (through the eyes of complexity theory)	2013	VLDB	5.093636e-05

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#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	7,585	Query Centric Partitioning and Allocation for Partially Replicated Database Systems	2017	SIGMOD
2	12,712	Scalable Continuous Query Processing by Tracking Hotspots	2006	VLDB
3	4,393	Bounded Conjunctive Queries	2014	VLDB
4	954	Parallel Evaluation of Conjunctive Queries	2011	PODS
5	6,377	Scalable Querying of Nested Data	2021	VLDB
6	4,742	Continuous Cloud-Scale Query Optimization and Processing	2013	VLDB
7	6,090	Scalable Query Rewriting: A Graph-Based Approach	2011	SIGMOD
8	913	A Scalable Algorithm for Answering Queries Using Views	2000	VLDB
9	6,841	Querying Big Data by Accessing Small Data	2015	PODS
10	4,250	Generalized Scale Independence Through Incremental Precomputation	2013	SIGMOD