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: h014f9e9c8385d415
Venue: VLDB
Year: 1999
Pagerank: 0.00012886042
Overall Rank: 951 | 93.63%
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
124	Approximate Frequency Counts over Data Streams	2002	VLDB	0.00030503973
541	BlazeIt: Optimizing Declarative Aggregation and Limit Queries for Neural Network-Based Video Analytics	2020	VLDB	0.00016627384
564	Congressional Samples for Approximate Answering of Group-By Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.00016251304
793	Random Sampling over Joins Revisited	2018	SIGMOD	0.00013903938
935	Dynamic Sample Selection for Approximate Query Processing	2003	SIGMOD	0.00012968914
1,435	Knowing When You’re Wrong: Building Fast and Reliable Approximate Query Processing Systems	2014	SIGMOD	0.00010659454
1,614	SciBORQ: Scientific data management with Bounds On Runtime and Quality	2011	CIDR	0.00010054823
2,040	Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time	2017	SIGMOD	9.1319608e-05
2,141	Guided Interaction: Rethinking the Query-Result Paradigm	2011	VLDB	8.9671737e-05
2,225	ThalamusDB: Approximate Query Processing on Multi-Modal Data	2024	SIGMOD	8.7996555e-05
2,231	DAQ: A New Paradigm for Approximate Query Processing	2015	VLDB	8.7882698e-05
2,406	Integrating DB and IR Technologies: What is the Sound of One Hand Clapping? *	2005	CIDR	8.4962449e-05
2,461	A Sampling Algebra for Aggregate Estimation	2013	VLDB	8.4123214e-05
3,016	Gestural Query Specification	2014	VLDB	7.7360586e-05
3,747	Accelerating Approximate Aggregation Queries with Expensive Predicates	2021	VLDB	7.0351475e-05
5,168	Querying Without Keyboards	2013	CIDR	6.2335584e-05
5,324	CliffGuard: A Principled Framework for Finding Robust Database Designs	2015	SIGMOD	6.1645235e-05
5,600	Derby/S: A DBMS for Sample-Based Query Answering	2006	SIGMOD	6.052685e-05
5,841	Joins on Samples: A Theoretical Guide for Practitioners	2020	VLDB	5.9569427e-05
6,014	Approximate Query Engines: Commercial Challenges and Research Opportunities	2017	SIGMOD	5.8956963e-05
7,745	PilotDB: Database-Agnostic Online Approximate Query Processing with A Priori Error Guarantees	2025	SIGMOD	5.4457135e-05
8,685	ShadowAQP: Efficient Approximate Group-by and Join Query via Attribute-oriented Sample Size Allocation and Data Generation	2023	VLDB	5.2730954e-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	0.00076079812
138	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00029532435
153	New Sampling-Based Summary Statistics for Improving Approximate Query Answers	1998	SIGMOD	0.0002855087
242	Fast Incremental Maintenance of Approximate Histograms	1997	VLDB	0.00023327437
564	Congressional Samples for Approximate Answering of Group-By Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.00016251304

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