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Flow-Loss: Learning Cardinality Estimates That Matter

Summary: Flow-Loss trains cardinality estimators against optimizer plan costs via a flow-routing formulation over plan graphs, rather than average Q-Error. On the 16K-query CEB benchmark, it yields better runtimes and markedly stronger generalization to unseen templates despite worse estimation accuracy. (summarized by gpt-5.6-luna on Jul 24 2026)

Paper ID
h0ecc8025d49f0dab
Venue
VLDB
Year
2021
Pagerank
9.7289523e-05
Overall Rank
1,740 | 88.34%
DOI
10.14778/3476249.3476259
PDF
Download (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

BibTeX Citation

@article{negi_vldb21,
        title = {{Flow-Loss: Learning Cardinality Estimates That Matter}},
        author = {Negi, Parimarjan and Marcus, Ryan and Kipf, Andreas and Mao, Hongzi and Tatbul, Nesime and Kraska, Tim and Alizadeh, Mohammad},
        journal = {PVLDB},
        series = {{VLDB} '21},
        volume = {14},
        number = {11},
        pages = {2019--2032},
        doi = {10.14778/3476249.3476259},
        url = {https://doi.org/10.14778/3476249.3476259},
        year = {2021}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 50 of 60 citing papers.

Rank Citing Paper Year Venue Pagerank
983 Cardinality Estimation in DBMS: A Comprehensive Benchmark Evaluation 2022 VLDB 0.00012677179
2,348 Learned Cardinality Estimation: An In-depth Study 2022 SIGMOD 8.5910072e-05
2,584 Fauce: Fast and Accurate Deep Ensembles with Uncertainty for Cardinality Estimation 2021 VLDB 8.2435322e-05
2,852 FactorJoin: A New Cardinality Estimation Framework for Join Queries 2023 SIGMOD 7.9201312e-05
3,269 Robust Query Driven Cardinality Estimation under Changing Workloads 2023 VLDB 7.463682e-05
4,202 Kepler: Robust Learning for Faster Parametric Query Optimization 2023 SIGMOD 6.7258607e-05
4,247 LEON: A New Framework for ML-Aided Query Optimization 2023 VLDB 6.6920059e-05
4,315 ALECE: An Attention-based Learned Cardinality Estimator for SPJ Queries on Dynamic Workloads 2024 VLDB 6.6545412e-05
4,683 AutoSteer: Learned Query Optimization for Any SQL Database 2023 VLDB 6.4545989e-05
5,043 Fine-Grained Modeling and Optimization for Intelligent Resource Management in Big Data Processing 2022 VLDB 6.28918e-05
5,044 Analyzing the Impact of Cardinality Estimation on Execution Plans in Microsoft SQL Server 2023 VLDB 6.2888728e-05
5,075 SafeBound: A Practical System for Generating Cardinality Bounds 2023 SIGMOD 6.2721634e-05
5,457 Sample-Efficient Cardinality Estimation Using Geometric Deep Learning 2024 VLDB 6.1058928e-05
5,911 Yannakakis+: Practical Acyclic Query Evaluation with Theoretical Guarantees 2025 SIGMOD 5.9338021e-05
5,982 Towards instance-optimized data systems 2021 VLDB 5.9096991e-05
6,402 A Unified Transferable Model for ML-Enhanced DBMS 2022 CIDR 5.7800842e-05
6,672 Speeding Up End-to-end Query Execution via Learning-based Progressive Cardinality Estimation 2023 SIGMOD 5.6975871e-05
6,812 dbET: Execution Time Distribution-based Plan Selection 2023 SIGMOD 5.6597129e-05
6,840 ASM: Harmonizing Autoregressive Model, Sampling, and Multi-dimensional Statistics Merging for Cardinality Estimation 2024 SIGMOD 5.6513231e-05
7,092 E2ETune: End-to-End Knob Tuning via Fine-tuned Generative Language Model 2025 VLDB 5.5868637e-05
7,377 PerfGuard: Deploying ML-for-Systems without Performance Regressions, Almost! 2021 VLDB 5.5238616e-05
7,561 Learned Offline Query Planning via Bayesian Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 5.4784915e-05
7,827 Parachute: Single-Pass Bi-Directional Information Passing 2025 VLDB 5.4297836e-05
7,830 Machine Learning for Cloud Data Systems: the Progress so far and the Path Forward 2021 VLDB 5.4294933e-05
7,844 Bespoke OLAP: Synthesizing Workload-Specific One-size-fits-one Database Engines 2026 VLDB 5.4255843e-05
8,026 A Spark Optimizer for Adaptive, Fine-Grained Parameter Tuning 2024 VLDB 5.3884724e-05
8,657 LIMAO: A Framework for Lifelong Modular Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.2790784e-05
8,908 Spatial Query Optimization With Learning 2024 VLDB 5.2369727e-05
8,975 Machine Unlearning in Learned Databases: An Experimental Analysis 2024 SIGMOD 5.2343759e-05
8,989 Conformal Prediction for Verifiable Learned Query Optimization 2025 VLDB 5.2304457e-05
9,143 Check Out the Big Brain on BRAD: Simplifying Cloud Data Processing with Learned Automated Data Meshes 2023 VLDB 5.2074327e-05
9,244 DPconv: Super-Polynomially Faster Join Ordering 2024 SIGMOD 5.1864409e-05
9,583 Athena: An Effective Learning-based Framework for Query Optimizer Performance Improvement 2025 SIGMOD 5.140977e-05
9,662 Low Rank Learning for Offline Query Optimization 2025 SIGMOD 5.1283524e-05
9,681 Are Joins over LSM-trees Ready? Take RocksDB as an Example 2025 VLDB 5.1258854e-05
9,753 A Practical Theory of Generalization in Selectivity Learning 2025 VLDB 5.1159926e-05
9,935 Approximate Sketches 2024 SIGMOD 5.0941477e-05
9,995 Graph Transformers for Query Plan Representation: Potentials and Challenges 2025 VLDB 5.0845476e-05
10,143 Still Asking: How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2025 VLDB 5.0597449e-05
10,181 How to Optimize SQL Queries? A Comparison Between Split, Holistic, and Hybrid Approaches 2025 VLDB 5.0550978e-05
10,249 Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections 2022 VLDB 5.0412674e-05
10,278 Redbench: Workload Synthesis From Cloud Traces 2026 VLDB 5.0334833e-05
10,327 Data-Agnostic Cardinality Learning from Imperfect Workloads 2025 VLDB 5.0241309e-05
10,370 An Elephant Under The Microscope: Analyzing The Interaction Of Optimizer Components In PostgreSQL 2025 SIGMOD 5.0010514e-05
10,490 Are Learned DBMS Components Robust to Workload Drift?: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
10,561 NeurBench: A Benchmark Suite for Learned Database Components with Drift Modeling: [Experiments & Analysis] 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
10,620 Approximate Query Processing under Updates 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
10,668 SEFRQO: A Self-Evolving Fine-Tuned RAG-Based Query Optimizer 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
10,751 Reqo: A Comprehensive Learning-Based Cost Model for Robust and Explainable Query Optimization 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
10,764 Practical Parameterized Query Optimization via Efficient Plan Reuse and List-wise Ranking 2026 SIGMOD 4.9605343e-05
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Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 28 of 28 cited papers.

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

Rank Cited Paper Year Venue Pagerank
15 How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? 2016 VLDB 0.00061463175
84 Learned Cardinalities: Estimating Correlated Joins with Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 0.00035920657
103 Selectivity Estimation Without the Attribute Value Independence Assumption 1997 VLDB 0.00033847446
142 Neo: A Learned Query Optimizer 2019 VLDB 0.00029114937
171 Wavelet-Based Histograms for Selectivity Estimation 1998 SIGMOD 0.00027063233
287 Selectivity Estimation using Probabilistic Models 2001 SIGMOD 0.00022060616
320 DeepDB: Learn from Data, not from Queries! 2020 VLDB 0.00021128745
372 STHoles: A Multidimensional Workload-Aware Histogram 2001 SIGMOD 0.00019768921
381 Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors 2009 VLDB 0.00019497061
405 Deep Unsupervised Cardinality Estimation 2020 VLDB 0.00019020138
453 An End-to-End Learning-based Cost Estimator 2020 VLDB 0.0001801482
508 NeuroCard: One Cardinality Estimator for All Tables 2021 VLDB 0.00017108973
594 Wander Join: Online Aggregation via Random Walks 2016 SIGMOD 0.00015814493
689 Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling 2017 CIDR 0.00014725904
690 Selectivity Estimation for Range Predicates using Lightweight Models 2019 VLDB 0.00014703258
793 Random Sampling over Joins Revisited 2018 SIGMOD 0.00013903938
1,064 Are We Ready For Learned Cardinality Estimation? 2021 VLDB 0.00012181459
1,156 QuickSel: Quick Selectivity Learning with Mixture Models 2020 SIGMOD 0.00011759683
1,436 Towards a Learning Optimizer for Shared Clouds 2019 VLDB 0.00010658836
1,444 Pessimistic Cardinality Estimation: Tighter Upper Bounds for Intermediate Join Cardinalities 2019 SIGMOD 0.00010616242
1,583 Deep Learning Models for Selectivity Estimation of Multi-Attribute Queries 2020 SIGMOD 0.00010148362
1,609 SkinnerDB: Regret-Bounded Query Evaluation via Reinforcement Learning 2019 SIGMOD 0.0001007196
2,228 Estimating Join Selectivities using Bandwidth-Optimized Kernel Density Models 2017 VLDB 8.7912743e-05
2,987 Accurate Summary-based Cardinality Estimation Through the Lens of Cardinality Estimation Graphs 2022 VLDB 7.767043e-05
3,062 Towards a Hands-Free Query Optimizer through Deep Learning 2019 CIDR 7.6809918e-05
3,212 Efficiently Approximating Selectivity Functions using Low Overhead Regression Models 2020 VLDB 7.5145409e-05
3,282 Estimating Cardinalities with Deep Sketches 2019 SIGMOD 7.4491295e-05
3,995 Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering 2021 CIDR 6.8530469e-05
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