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: 361
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 4.5404832e-05
Overall Rank: 8,350 | 41.92%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Guido Moerkotte
2. Axel Hertzschuch

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
4,523	Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering	2021	CIDR	6.1135504e-05
5,930	FASTgres: Making Learned Query Optimizer Hinting Effective	2023	VLDB	5.2682075e-05
9,726	Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning	2025	SIGMOD	4.2943379e-05
9,869	Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections	2022	VLDB	4.2675361e-05
10,590	ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries	2025	VLDB	4.1945683e-05
10,639	Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses	2025	VLDB	4.1945683e-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	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.00092385438
71	How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?	2016	VLDB	0.00059038975
99	On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results	1991	SIGMOD	0.00050022914
211	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00033981214
308	Distinct Sampling for Highly-Accurate Answers to Distinct Values Queries and Event Reports	2001	VLDB	0.00028142852
367	Sequential Sampling Procedures For Query Size Estimation	1992	SIGMOD	0.00025509745
378	Towards Estimation Error Guarantees for Distinct Values	2000	PODS	0.0002497492
629	Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors	2009	VLDB	0.00018942366
1,043	Adaptive Ordering of Pipelined Stream Filters	2004	SIGMOD	0.00014476247
1,105	Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling	2017	CIDR	0.00013990395
1,255	Fixed-Precision Estimation of Join Selectivity	1993	PODS	0.00013024064
1,369	Random Sampling over Joins Revisited	2018	SIGMOD	0.00012339777
2,254	Two-Level Sampling for Join Size Estimation	2017	SIGMOD	9.1897043e-05
2,377	CS2: A New Database Synopsis for Query Estimation	2013	SIGMOD	8.9402115e-05
3,013	Cardinality Estimation Using Sample Views with Quality Assurance	2007	SIGMOD	7.7137441e-05
5,905	Exploiting Ordered Dictionaries to Efficiently Construct Histograms with Q-Error Guarantees in SAP HANA	2014	SIGMOD	5.2788785e-05
6,374	Optimization of Conjunctive Predicates for Main Memory Column Stores	2016	VLDB	5.0927058e-05

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Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,702	Every Row Counts: Combining Sketches and Sampling for Accurate Group-By Result Estimates	2019	CIDR	6.8295759e-05
9,523	Analysis and Application of Adaptive Sampling	2000	PODS	4.331052e-05
762	Query Size Estimation by Adaptive Sampling (Extended Abstract)	1990	PODS	0.00017036868
2,995	A Sampling Algebra for Aggregate Estimation	2013	VLDB	7.7587199e-05
39	Statistical Estimators for Relational Algebra Expressions	1988	PODS	0.00074745564
1,105	Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling	2017	CIDR	0.00013990395
1,758	Sampling-Based Query Re-Optimization	2016	SIGMOD	0.00010655546
3,013	Cardinality Estimation Using Sample Views with Quality Assurance	2007	SIGMOD	7.7137441e-05
9,380	Small Selectivities Matter: Lifting the Burden of Empty Samples	2021	SIGMOD	4.3461329e-05
92	Practical Selectivity Estimation through Adaptive Sampling	1990	SIGMOD	0.00051315959