Approximate Query Processing: No Silver Bullet

Summary: State of the art of Approximate Query Processing; progress notable but limited in product impact. Proposes two concrete avenues to integrate AQP into data platforms (architecture, tooling) to realize practical value. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 5407
Venue: SIGMOD
Year: 2017
Pagerank: 0.00012145154
Overall Rank: 1,108 | 92.40%
DOI: 10.1145/3055918.3056097

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Surajit Chaudhuri (Microsoft)
2. Bolin Ding (Microsoft)
3. Srikanth Kandula (Microsoft)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{chaudhuri_sigmod17,
        title = {{Approximate Query Processing: No Silver Bullet}},
        author = {Chaudhuri, Surajit and Ding, Bolin and Kandula, Srikanth},
        series = {{SIGMOD} '17},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {ACM} {SIGMOD} International Conference on Management of Data},
        publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
        doi = {10.1145/3055918.3056097},
        url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3055918.3056097},
        year = {2017}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 42 of 42 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1,392	Northstar: An Interactive Data Science System	2018	VLDB	0.00010936065
1,799	DBEst: Revisiting Approximate Query Processing Engines with Machine Learning Models	2019	SIGMOD	9.7326398e-05
3,366	AQP++: Connecting Approximate Query Processing With Aggregate Precomputation for Interactive Analytics	2018	SIGMOD	7.4748604e-05
3,595	Plato: Approximate Analytics over Compressed Time Series with Tight Deterministic Error Guarantees	2020	VLDB	7.2736195e-05
3,684	ThalamusDB: Approximate Query Processing on Multi-Modal Data	2024	SIGMOD	7.2033959e-05
4,007	Optimizing Video Analytics with Declarative Model Relationships	2023	VLDB	6.9632395e-05
4,114	Optimizing Machine Learning Inference Queries with Correlative Proxy Models	2022	VLDB	6.8941194e-05
4,205	Sample Debiasing in the Themis Open World Database System	2020	SIGMOD	6.8337021e-05
4,212	Data Series Progressive Similarity Search with Probabilistic Quality Guarantees	2020	SIGMOD	6.8283344e-05
4,261	Relational Data Synthesis using Generative Adversarial Networks: A Design Space Exploration	2020	VLDB	6.7982037e-05
5,255	At-the-time and Back-in-time Persistent Sketches	2021	SIGMOD	6.2982495e-05
5,524	Database Benchmarking for Supporting Real-Time Interactive Querying of Large Data	2020	SIGMOD	6.1868208e-05
5,983	Adaptive and Robust Query Execution for Lakehouses at Scale	2024	VLDB	6.0206841e-05
6,206	Combining Aggregation and Sampling (Nearly) Optimally for Approximate Query Processing	2021	SIGMOD	5.9443409e-05
6,262	Mosaic: A Sample-Based Database System for Open World Query Processing	2020	CIDR	5.9361728e-05
7,069	SKT: A One-Pass Multi-Sketch Data Analytics Accelerator	2021	VLDB	5.7117595e-05
7,256	Weighted Distinct Sampling: Cardinality Estimation for SPJ Queries	2021	SIGMOD	5.6625146e-05
7,290	Learning to be a Statistician: Learned Estimator for Number of Distinct Values	2022	VLDB	5.6540503e-05
7,316	SpareLLM: Automatically Selecting Task-Specific Minimum-Cost Large Language Models under Equivalence Constraint	2025	SIGMOD	5.646695e-05
7,351	PairwiseHist: Fast, Accurate and Space-Efficient Approximate Query Processing with Data Compression	2024	VLDB	5.6354898e-05
7,551	Enabling Efficient and General Subpopulation Analytics in Multidimensional Data Streams	2022	VLDB	5.6006414e-05
7,556	ReStore - Neural Data Completion for Relational Databases	2021	SIGMOD	5.5997742e-05
8,108	Experiences with Approximating Queries in Microsoft’s Production Big-Data Clusters	2019	VLDB	5.4850569e-05
8,161	LAQy: Efficient and Reusable Query Approximations via Lazy Sampling	2023	SIGMOD	5.4752972e-05
8,204	PilotDB: Database-Agnostic Online Approximate Query Processing with A Priori Error Guarantees	2025	SIGMOD	5.4667903e-05
8,791	HAP: An Efficient Hamming Space Index Based on Augmented Pigeonhole Principle	2022	SIGMOD	5.3717005e-05
8,984	Hit the Gym: Accelerating Query Execution to Efficiently Bootstrap Behavior Models for Self-Driving Database Management Systems	2024	VLDB	5.3395569e-05
9,392	A Step Toward Deep Online Aggregation	2023	SIGMOD	5.2755515e-05
9,406	Controlled Intentional Degradation in Analytical Video Systems	2022	SIGMOD	5.2751448e-05
9,785	Secure Sampling for Approximate Multi-party Query Processing	2023	SIGMOD	5.2209769e-05
9,832	The Data Interaction Game	2018	SIGMOD	5.2124469e-05
9,882	Demonstration of Accelerating Machine Learning Inference Queries with Correlative Proxy Models	2022	VLDB	5.2040783e-05
9,940	RALF: Accuracy-Aware Scheduling for Feature Store Maintenance	2024	VLDB	5.1924403e-05
10,342	Approximate Query Processing under Updates	2026	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
10,404	Stochastic Submodular Data Forgetting	2026	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
10,504	Task Cascades for Efficient Unstructured Data Processing	2026	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05
10,578	ConANN: Conformal Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search	2026	VLDB	5.093636e-05
10,891	Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses	2025	VLDB	5.093636e-05
11,280	Confidence Intervals for Private Query Processing	2024	VLDB	5.093636e-05
11,736	FlashP: An Analytical Pipeline for Real-time Forecasting of Time-Series Relational Data	2021	VLDB	5.093636e-05
11,749	BitGourmet: Deterministic Approximation via Optimized Bit Selection	2020	CIDR	5.093636e-05
11,781	Demonstration of BitGourmet: Data Analysis via Deterministic Approximation	2020	SIGMOD	5.093636e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 51 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
6	Pig Latin: A Not-So-Foreign Language for Data Processing	2008	SIGMOD	0.0010686205
9	Online Aggregation	1997	SIGMOD	0.00077458002
11	Implementing Data Cubes Efficiently	1996	SIGMOD	0.00071822821
24	Spark SQL: Relational Data Processing in Spark	2015	SIGMOD	0.00054865648
30	SCOPE: Easy and Efficient Parallel Processing of Massive Data Sets	2008	VLDB	0.00051174276
32	Hive - A Warehousing Solution Over a Map-Reduce Framework	2009	VLDB	0.00050111008
36	Accurate Estimation Of The Number Of Tuples Satisfying A Condition	1984	SIGMOD	0.00048351457
51	Dremel: Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Datasets	2010	VLDB	0.0004291425
54	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.00040810225
87	Automated Selection of Materialized Views and Indexes for SQL Databases	2000	VLDB	0.00035281619
131	Ripple Joins for Online Aggregation	1999	SIGMOD	0.00030424509
213	Approximate Computation of Multidimensional Aggregates of Sparse Data Using Wavelets	1999	SIGMOD	0.00024723025
288	Towards Estimation Error Guarantees for Distinct Values	2000	PODS	0.00022296371
307	Approximate Query Processing Using Wavelets	2000	VLDB	0.00021792475
327	The Aqua Approximate Query Answering System	1999	SIGMOD	0.00021091539
363	Approximate Query Processing: Taming the TeraBytes! A Tutorial	2001	VLDB	0.0002005475
508	Random Sampling for Histogram Construction: How much is enough?	1998	SIGMOD	0.00017275873
553	Congressional Samples for Approximate Answering of Group-By Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.00016590619
593	Wander Join: Online Aggregation via Random Walks	2016	SIGMOD	0.00016027871
710	Trill: A High-Performance Incremental Query Processor for Diverse Analytics	2015	VLDB	0.00014715033
737	Join Size Estimation Subject to Filter Conditions	2015	VLDB	0.00014490983
819	Quickr: Lazily Approximating Complex AdHoc Queries in BigData Clusters	2016	SIGMOD	0.00013815639
909	Dynamic Sample Selection for Approximate Query Processing	2003	SIGMOD	0.00013291205
1,009	Online Aggregation for Large MapReduce Jobs	2011	VLDB	0.00012684342
1,064	Scalable Approximate Query Processing With The DBO Engine	2007	SIGMOD	0.00012336248
1,166	ICICLES: Self-tuning Samples for Approximate Query Answering	2000	VLDB	0.00011850439
1,227	Blink and It's Done: Interactive Queries on Very Large Data	2012	VLDB	0.00011582387
1,401	Knowing When You’re Wrong: Building Fast and Reliable Approximate Query Processing Systems	2014	SIGMOD	0.00010889902
1,582	SciBORQ: Scientific data management with Bounds On Runtime and Quality	2011	CIDR	0.00010295367
1,634	Rapid Sampling for Visualizations with Ordering Guarantees	2015	VLDB	0.00010163938
1,827	G-OLA: Generalized On-Line Aggregation for Interactive Analysis on Big Data	2015	SIGMOD	9.6690206e-05
1,872	The Analytical Bootstrap: a New Method for Fast Error Estimation in Approximate Query Processing	2014	SIGMOD	9.5759874e-05
1,962	Sample + Seek: Approximating Aggregates with Distribution Precision Guarantee	2016	SIGMOD	9.3978414e-05
2,206	DAQ: A New Paradigm for Approximate Query Processing	2015	VLDB	8.957715e-05
2,271	Online Maintenance of Very Large Random Samples	2004	SIGMOD	8.8254873e-05
2,404	Cardinality Estimation Using Sample Views with Quality Assurance	2007	SIGMOD	8.6225576e-05
2,413	A Sampling Algebra for Aggregate Estimation	2013	VLDB	8.6116764e-05
2,608	A Robust, Optimization-Based Approach for Approximate Answering of Aggregate Queries	2001	SIGMOD	8.347674e-05
3,241	Optimal and Approximate Computation of Summary Statistics for Range Aggregates	2001	PODS	7.6057671e-05
3,497	Interactive Analysis of Web-Scale Data	2009	CIDR	7.3634378e-05
4,393	Bounded Conjunctive Queries	2014	VLDB	6.7280426e-05
4,474	Querying Big Graphs within Bounded Resources	2014	SIGMOD	6.6803983e-05
5,222	CliffGuard: A Principled Framework for Finding Robust Database Designs	2015	SIGMOD	6.3103741e-05
5,421	Fast and Near–Optimal Algorithms for Approximating Distributions by Histograms	2015	PODS	6.2245831e-05
5,676	Scalable Progressive Analytics on Big Data in the Cloud	2013	VLDB	6.1251441e-05
5,700	SnappyData: A Hybrid Transactional Analytical Store Built On Spark	2016	SIGMOD	6.1167342e-05
6,841	Querying Big Data by Accessing Small Data	2015	PODS	5.7574257e-05
7,484	On Scale Independence for Querying Big Data	2014	PODS	5.6074278e-05
8,701	Data Driven Approximation with Bounded Resources	2017	VLDB	5.3828806e-05
8,714	Stale View Cleaning: Getting Fresh Answers from Stale Materialized Views	2015	VLDB	5.3778009e-05

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#	Overall Rank	Paper	Year	Venue
1	4,789	Learned Approximate Query Processing: Make it Light, Accurate and Fast	2021	CIDR
2	909	Dynamic Sample Selection for Approximate Query Processing	2003	SIGMOD
3	6,107	Adaptive Query Processing: Why, How, When, What Next	2006	SIGMOD
4	307	Approximate Query Processing Using Wavelets	2000	VLDB
5	3,366	AQP++: Connecting Approximate Query Processing With Aggregate Precomputation for Interactive Analytics	2018	SIGMOD
6	363	Approximate Query Processing: Taming the TeraBytes! A Tutorial	2001	VLDB
7	10,634	Efficient Approximate Query Processing with Block Sampling	2025	CIDR
8	6,206	Combining Aggregation and Sampling (Nearly) Optimally for Approximate Query Processing	2021	SIGMOD
9	10,342	Approximate Query Processing under Updates	2026	SIGMOD
10	5,906	Approximate Query Engines: Commercial Challenges and Research Opportunities	2017	SIGMOD