alpha to omega: The Greek Alphabet of Sampling

Summary: Probabilistic analysis of sampling for cardinality estimation that replaces the standard k·n/m rule with optimal estimators and tight bounds on l and q-error. Also gives sample-size formulas to meet q-error targets and yields much improved selection/join estimates. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 360
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 5.4714466e-05
Overall Rank: 8,183 | 43.86%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Guido Moerkotte (University of Mannheim)
2. Axel Hertzschuch (Technical University of Dresden)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{moerkotte_cidr20,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '20},
        title = {{alpha to omega: The Greek Alphabet of Sampling}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Moerkotte, Guido and Hertzschuch, Axel},
        year = {2020}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,959	Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering	2021	CIDR	6.9879431e-05
5,277	FASTgres: Making Learned Query Optimizer Hinting Effective	2023	VLDB	6.2859099e-05
9,844	Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning	2025	SIGMOD	5.2094602e-05
10,016	Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections	2022	VLDB	5.1764556e-05
10,851	ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries	2025	VLDB	5.093636e-05
10,891	Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses	2025	VLDB	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 17 of 17 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
54	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.00040810225
89	On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results	1991	SIGMOD	0.00035031529
136	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00030123303
255	Distinct Sampling for Highly-Accurate Answers to Distinct Values Queries and Event Reports	2001	VLDB	0.00023174541
288	Towards Estimation Error Guarantees for Distinct Values	2000	PODS	0.00022296371
339	Sequential Sampling Procedures For Query Size Estimation	1992	SIGMOD	0.00020723773
388	Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors	2009	VLDB	0.00019410042
694	Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling	2017	CIDR	0.00014911698
802	Random Sampling over Joins Revisited	2018	SIGMOD	0.00013907725
813	Adaptive Ordering of Pipelined Stream Filters	2004	SIGMOD	0.00013846487
1,186	Fixed-Precision Estimation of Join Selectivity	1993	PODS	0.00011764128
1,664	Two-Level Sampling for Join Size Estimation	2017	SIGMOD	0.00010070362
1,893	CS2: A New Database Synopsis for Query Estimation	2013	SIGMOD	9.5269935e-05
2,404	Cardinality Estimation Using Sample Views with Quality Assurance	2007	SIGMOD	8.6225576e-05
5,693	Exploiting Ordered Dictionaries to Efficiently Construct Histograms with Q-Error Guarantees in SAP HANA	2014	SIGMOD	6.1189424e-05
6,009	Optimization of Conjunctive Predicates for Main Memory Column Stores	2016	VLDB	6.0113733e-05

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2	992	Query Size Estimation by Adaptive Sampling (Extended Abstract)	1990	PODS
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7	1,256	Sampling-Based Query Re-Optimization	2016	SIGMOD
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9	9,455	Small Selectivities Matter: Lifting the Burden of Empty Samples	2021	SIGMOD
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