A Random Walk Approach to Sampling Hidden Databases

Summary: Random-walk over the interface query space to obtain a uniform sample of a hidden backend database accessed via form-like web interfaces. Fixed vs random attribute ordering and a probabilistic rejection technique improve sample quality; extensive experiments show accuracy and efficiency. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 3888
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2007
Pagerank: 5.6627467e-05
Overall Rank: 5,141 | 64.28%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 15 of 15 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
2,817	Mining Search Engine Query Logs via Suggestion Sampling	2008	VLDB	8.0695314e-05
5,739	Walk, Not Wait: Faster Sampling Over Online Social Networks	2015	VLDB	5.3454732e-05
6,643	Privacy Implications of Database Ranking	2015	VLDB	4.9746714e-05
7,890	Mining a Search Engine’s Corpus: Efficient Yet Unbiased Sampling and Aggregate Estimation	2011	SIGMOD	4.6205184e-05
8,132	Discovering the Skyline of Web Databases	2016	VLDB	4.5741104e-05
8,674	Progressive Deep Web Crawling Through Keyword Queries For Data Enrichment	2019	SIGMOD	4.4659264e-05
8,680	Unbiased Estimation of Size and Other Aggregates Over Hidden Web Databases	2010	SIGMOD	4.4634799e-05
9,437	Aggregate Estimation Over Dynamic Hidden Web Databases	2014	VLDB	4.3390134e-05
9,550	Attribute Domain Discovery for Hidden Web Databases	2011	SIGMOD	4.3216687e-05
11,891	Query Reranking As A Service	2016	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
12,096	Rank Discovery From Web Databases	2013	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
12,275	An Access Cost-Aware Approach for Object Retrieval over Multiple Sources	2010	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
12,309	Privacy Preservation of Aggregates in Hidden Databases: Why and How?	2009	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
13,394	Aggregate Estimations over Location Based Services	2015	VLDB	-
13,556	HDSampler: Revealing Data Behind Web Form Interfaces	2009	SIGMOD	-

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 7 of 7 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
28	Accurate Estimation Of The Number Of Tuples Satisfying A Condition	1984	SIGMOD	0.00080571183
233	Crawling the Hidden Web	2001	VLDB	0.00031996412
430	Approximate Query Processing: Taming the TeraBytes! A Tutorial	2001	VLDB	0.00023406426
1,133	Automatic Discovery of Language Models for Text Databases	1999	SIGMOD	0.00013765547
1,790	Effective Use of Block-Level Sampling in Statistics Estimation	2004	SIGMOD	0.00010529479
3,956	Probe, Count, and Classify: Categorizing Hidden-Web Databases	2001	SIGMOD	6.5891156e-05
4,100	A Bi-Level Bernoulli Scheme for Database Sampling	2004	SIGMOD	6.4473679e-05

Semantically Similar Papers

Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
12,309	Privacy Preservation of Aggregates in Hidden Databases: Why and How?	2009	SIGMOD	4.1905499e-05
1,486	Distributed Search over the Hidden Web: Hierarchical Database Sampling and Selection	2002	VLDB	0.00011691409
3,956	Probe, Count, and Classify: Categorizing Hidden-Web Databases	2001	SIGMOD	6.5891156e-05
12,096	Rank Discovery From Web Databases	2013	VLDB	4.1905499e-05
46	Simple Random Sampling from Relational Databases	1986	VLDB	0.00071588702
13,556	HDSampler: Revealing Data Behind Web Form Interfaces	2009	SIGMOD	-
7,716	Approximating Aggregate Queries about Web Pages via Random Walks	2000	VLDB	4.664328e-05
8,680	Unbiased Estimation of Size and Other Aggregates Over Hidden Web Databases	2010	SIGMOD	4.4634799e-05
9,549	Optimal Algorithms for Crawling a Hidden Database in the Web	2012	VLDB	4.3216687e-05
12,197	Randomized Generalization for Aggregate Suppression Over Hidden Web Databases	2011	VLDB	4.1905499e-05