Approximate Query Processing: Taming the TeraBytes! A Tutorial

Summary: Tutorial on approximate aggregate query processing via online sampling and precomputed synopses with explicit error guarantees. Covers multidimensional data, joins, set-valued queries, Aqua-style architectures, streaming, dependencies, and workload-tuned synopsis design. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID: h07b4f63cac96fca1
Venue: VLDB
Year: 2001
Pagerank: 0.00019698889
Overall Rank: 374 | 97.50%
DOI: -

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Minos Garofalakis (AT&T)
2. Phillip B. Gibbons (AT&T)

BibTeX Citation

@article{garofalakis_vldb01,
        title = {{Approximate Query Processing: Taming the TeraBytes! A Tutorial}},
        author = {Garofalakis, Minos and Gibbons, Phillip B.},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '01},
        pages = {169},
        year = {2001}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 41 of 41 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
127	Trio: A System for Integrated Management of Data, Accuracy, and Lineage	2005	CIDR	0.00030337791
343	Model-Driven Data Acquisition in Sensor Networks	2004	VLDB	0.00020486383
435	Mining Database Structure; Or, How to Build a Data Quality Browser	2002	SIGMOD	0.00018277436
541	BlazeIt: Optimizing Declarative Aggregation and Limit Queries for Neural Network-Based Video Analytics	2020	VLDB	0.00016627384
844	Processing Complex Aggregate Queries over Data Streams	2002	SIGMOD	0.00013498392
852	The Design of an Acquisitional Query Processor For Sensor Networks	2003	SIGMOD	0.00013447072
1,065	Approximate Query Processing: No Silver Bullet	2017	SIGMOD	0.00012181098
1,151	Data Management Challenges in Production Machine Learning	2017	SIGMOD	0.000117662
1,254	Blink and It's Done: Interactive Queries on Very Large Data	2012	VLDB	0.00011314204
1,668	Rapid Sampling for Visualizations with Ordering Guarantees	2015	VLDB	9.9190265e-05
1,721	A Sample-and-Clean Framework for Fast and Accurate Query Processing on Dirty Data	2014	SIGMOD	9.7821782e-05
2,014	Sample + Seek: Approximating Aggregates with Distribution Precision Guarantee	2016	SIGMOD	9.1775869e-05
2,197	Cache-Craft: Managing Chunk-Caches for Efficient Retrieval-Augmented Generation	2025	SIGMOD	8.8751404e-05
2,340	Partial Results for Online Query Processing	2002	SIGMOD	8.598874e-05
2,428	Using Probabilistic Models for Data Management in Acquisitional Environments	2005	CIDR	8.466877e-05
3,052	Incremental and Approximate Inference for Faster Occlusion-based Deep CNN Explanations	2019	SIGMOD	7.6924471e-05
3,110	Lux: Always-on Visualization Recommendations for Exploratory Dataframe Workflows	2022	VLDB	7.6228505e-05
3,348	I've Seen "Enough": Incrementally Improving Visualizations to Support Rapid Decision Making	2017	VLDB	7.3783668e-05
4,000	Exploiting Correlations for Expensive Predicate Evaluation	2015	SIGMOD	6.8489751e-05
4,302	A Method for Optimizing Opaque Filter Queries	2020	SIGMOD	6.6614501e-05
4,666	Mining Graph Patterns Efficiently via Randomized Summaries	2009	VLDB	6.4630612e-05
4,984	PrivateClean: Data Cleaning and Differential Privacy	2016	SIGMOD	6.3150969e-05
5,355	Supporting Our AI Overlords: Redesigning Data Systems to be Agent-First	2026	CIDR	6.1514948e-05
5,996	A Random Walk Approach to Sampling Hidden Databases	2007	SIGMOD	5.9037651e-05
6,164	Efficient Construction of Approximate Ad-Hoc ML models Through Materialization and Reuse	2018	VLDB	5.8508462e-05
6,867	Capturing Data Uncertainty in High-Volume Stream Processing	2009	CIDR	5.644892e-05
7,540	Benchmarking Spreadsheet Systems	2020	SIGMOD	5.4838462e-05
8,086	Mining a Search Engine’s Corpus: Efficient Yet Unbiased Sampling and Aggregate Estimation	2011	SIGMOD	5.3748177e-05
8,425	FaDE: More Than a Million What-ifs Per Second	2025	VLDB	5.3187951e-05
8,894	Stale View Cleaning: Getting Fresh Answers from Stale Materialized Views	2015	VLDB	5.2415191e-05
9,205	Efficient Approximations of Conjunctive Queries	2012	PODS	5.1945931e-05
9,865	Aggregate Estimation Over Dynamic Hidden Web Databases	2014	VLDB	5.1057684e-05
9,939	Auto-Approximation of Graph Computing	2014	VLDB	5.0932503e-05
10,231	Task Cascades for Efficient Unstructured Data Processing	2026	SIGMOD	5.0432098e-05
10,620	Approximate Query Processing under Updates	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
10,669	Stochastic Submodular Data Forgetting	2026	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
12,055	In the Land of Data Streams where Synopses are Missing, One Framework to Bring Them All	2021	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
12,235	Enabling Data Science for the Majority	2019	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
12,377	A Study of Sorting Algorithms on Approximate Memory	2016	SIGMOD	4.9605343e-05
12,556	When Data Management Systems Meet Approximate Hardware: Challenges and Opportunities	2014	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
13,037	AQAX: A System for Approximate XML Query Answers	2006	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 52 cited papers.

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

Rank	Cited Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
1	Access Path Selection in a Relational Database Management System	1979	SIGMOD	0.0023948467
9	Online Aggregation	1997	SIGMOD	0.00076079812
36	Accurate Estimation Of The Number Of Tuples Satisfying A Condition	1984	SIGMOD	0.00047770864
37	Improved Histograms for Selectivity Estimation of Range Predicates	1996	SIGMOD	0.00047654188
57	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.0003999751
58	Statistical Estimators for Relational Algebra Expressions	1988	PODS	0.00039922419
78	Sampling-Based Estimation of the Number of Distinct Values of an Attribute	1995	VLDB	0.00036725074
79	Practical Selectivity Estimation through Adaptive Sampling	1990	SIGMOD	0.00036394222
82	Space-Efficient Online Computation of Quantile Summaries	2001	SIGMOD	0.00036097627
91	On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results	1991	SIGMOD	0.00034691614
103	Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption	1997	VLDB	0.00033847446
119	Equi-Depth Histograms For Estimating Selectivity Factors For Multi-Dimensional Queries	1988	SIGMOD	0.00031291457
135	Ripple Joins for Online Aggregation	1999	SIGMOD	0.00029805026
138	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00029532435
151	An Efficient, Cost-Driven Index Selection Tool for Microsoft SQL Server	1997	VLDB	0.00028611216
153	New Sampling-Based Summary Statistics for Improving Approximate Query Answers	1998	SIGMOD	0.0002855087
171	Wavelet-Based Histograms for Selectivity Estimation	1998	SIGMOD	0.00027063233
183	Processing Aggregate Relational Queries with Hard Time Constraints	1989	SIGMOD	0.00026316699
222	Approximate Computation of Multidimensional Aggregates of Sparse Data Using Wavelets	1999	SIGMOD	0.00024136952
234	Adaptive Selectivity Estimation Using Query Feedback	1994	SIGMOD	0.00023726296
242	Fast Incremental Maintenance of Approximate Histograms	1997	VLDB	0.00023327437
268	Distinct Sampling for Highly-Accurate Answers to Distinct Values Queries and Event Reports	2001	VLDB	0.00022654182
277	Optimal Histograms with Quality Guarantees	1998	VLDB	0.0002235043
285	Balancing Histogram Optimality and Practicality for Query Result Size Estimation	1995	SIGMOD	0.00022143946
287	Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models	2001	SIGMOD	0.00022060616
296	Towards Estimation Error Guarantees for Distinct Values	2000	PODS	0.00021874894
311	Approximate Query Processing Using Wavelets	2000	VLDB	0.00021315058
316	Surfing Wavelets on Streams: One-Pass Summaries for Approximate Aggregate Queries	2001	VLDB	0.00021238056
372	STHoles: A Multidimensional Workload-Aware Histogram	2001	SIGMOD	0.00019768921
380	AutoAdmin "What-if" Index Analysis Utility	1998	SIGMOD	0.00019530546
432	Tracking Join and Self-Join Sizes in Limited Storage	1999	PODS	0.00018400309
450	Histogram-Based Approximation of Set-Valued Query Answers	1999	VLDB	0.0001806593
457	Self-tuning Histograms: Building Histograms Without Looking at Data	1999	SIGMOD	0.00017915659
518	Random Sampling for Histogram Construction: How much is enough?	1998	SIGMOD	0.00016918797
564	Congressional Samples for Approximate Answering of Group-By Queries	2000	SIGMOD	0.00016251304
566	On Computing Correlated Aggregates Over Continual Data Streams	2001	SIGMOD	0.00016236872
625	Efficiently Supporting Ad Hoc Queries in Large Datasets of Time Sequences	1997	SIGMOD	0.00015436082
667	Progressive Approximate Aggregate Queries with a Multi-Resolution Tree Structure	2001	SIGMOD	0.00014941252
701	Independence is Good: Dependency-Based Histogram Synopses for High-Dimensional Data	2001	SIGMOD	0.0001464136
750	Bifocal Sampling for Skew-Resistant Join Size Estimation	1996	SIGMOD	0.00014246313
806	Universality of Serial Histograms	1993	VLDB	0.00013752086
868	Approximating Multi-Dimensional Aggregate Range Queries Over Real Attributes	2000	SIGMOD	0.00013336675
1,006	Dynamic Maintenance of Wavelet-Based Histograms	2000	VLDB	0.00012551491
1,080	Multi-dimensional Selectivity Estimation Using Compressed Histogram Information	1999	SIGMOD	0.00012114187
1,186	ICICLES: Self-tuning Samples for Approximate Query Answering	2000	VLDB	0.00011581468
1,754	Combining Histograms and Parametric Curve Fitting for Feedback-Driven Query Result-Size Estimation	1999	VLDB	9.7111856e-05
1,768	Semantic Compression and Pattern Extraction with Fascicles	1999	VLDB	9.6803078e-05
2,661	A Robust, Optimization-Based Approach for Approximate Answering of Aggregate Queries	2001	SIGMOD	8.1414177e-05
2,664	SPARTAN: A Model-Based Semantic Compression System for Massive Data Tables	2001	SIGMOD	8.1367338e-05
3,312	Optimal and Approximate Computation of Summary Statistics for Range Aggregates	2001	PODS	7.4165176e-05

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1	10,620	Approximate Query Processing under Updates	2026	SIGMOD
2	11,149	Efficient Approximate Query Processing with Block Sampling	2025	CIDR
3	138	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD
4	935	Dynamic Sample Selection for Approximate Query Processing	2003	SIGMOD
5	311	Approximate Query Processing Using Wavelets	2000	VLDB
6	5,016	Online Query Processing: A Tutorial	2001	SIGMOD
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