Aqua: A Fast Decision Support System Using Approximate Query Answers

Summary: Aqua provides fast approximate aggregation for OLAP by rewriting queries to run on precomputed synopses stored in the DBMS. Synopses are incrementally maintained and come with quality guarantees, enabling DBMS-agnostic deployment atop commercial RDBMS. (summarized by gpt-5-nano on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: 8816
Venue: VLDB
Year: 1999
Pagerank: 0.00013125812
Overall Rank: 931 | 93.62%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Swarup Acharya (AT&T)
2. Phillip B. Gibbons (AT&T)
3. Viswanath Poosala (AT&T)

BibTeX Citation

@article{acharya_vldb99,
        title = {{Aqua: A Fast Decision Support System Using Approximate Query Answers}},
        author = {Acharya, Swarup and Gibbons, Phillip B. and Poosala, Viswanath},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '99},
        pages = {754},
        year = {1999}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 22 of 22 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
122	Approximate Frequency Counts over Data Streams	2002	VLDB	0.00031260115
553	Congressional Samples for Approximate Answering of Group-By Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.00016590619
569	BlazeIt: Optimizing Declarative Aggregation and Limit Queries for Neural Network-Based Video Analytics	2020	VLDB	0.00016348191
802	Random Sampling over Joins Revisited	2018	SIGMOD	0.00013907725
909	Dynamic Sample Selection for Approximate Query Processing	2003	SIGMOD	0.00013291205
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
1,995	Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time	2017	SIGMOD	9.3403665e-05
2,087	Guided Interaction: Rethinking the Query-Result Paradigm	2011	VLDB	9.1914119e-05
2,206	DAQ: A New Paradigm for Approximate Query Processing	2015	VLDB	8.957715e-05
2,359	Integrating DB and IR Technologies: What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? *	2005	CIDR	8.698016e-05
2,413	A Sampling Algebra for Aggregate Estimation	2013	VLDB	8.6116764e-05
2,946	Gestural Query Specification	2014	VLDB	7.93259e-05
3,684	ThalamusDB: Approximate Query Processing on Multi-Modal Data	2024	SIGMOD	7.2033959e-05
3,907	Accelerating Approximate Aggregation Queries with Expensive Predicates	2021	VLDB	7.0278233e-05
5,084	Querying Without Keyboards	2013	CIDR	6.3692734e-05
5,222	CliffGuard: A Principled Framework for Finding Robust Database Designs	2015	SIGMOD	6.3103741e-05
5,460	Derby/S: A DBMS for Sample-Based Query Answering	2006	SIGMOD	6.2106757e-05
5,743	Joins on Samples: A Theoretical Guide for Practitioners	2020	VLDB	6.1025457e-05
5,906	Approximate Query Engines: Commercial Challenges and Research Opportunities	2017	SIGMOD	6.0457047e-05
8,204	PilotDB: Database-Agnostic Online Approximate Query Processing with A Priori Error Guarantees	2025	SIGMOD	5.4667903e-05
8,492	ShadowAQP: Efficient Approximate Group-by and Join Query via Attribute-oriented Sample Size Allocation and Data Generation	2023	VLDB	5.4145838e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 5 of 5 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
9	Online Aggregation	1997	SIGMOD	0.00077458002
136	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00030123303
149	New Sampling-Based Summary Statistics for Improving Approximate Query Answers	1998	SIGMOD	0.00029226907
235	Fast Incremental Maintenance of Approximate Histograms	1997	VLDB	0.00023783792
553	Congressional Samples for Approximate Answering of Group-By Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.00016590619

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