alpha to omega: The Greek Alphabet of Sampling

Summary: Probabilistic analysis of sampling for cardinality estimation that replaces the standard k·n/m rule with optimal estimators and tight bounds on l and q-error. Also gives sample-size formulas to meet q-error targets and yields much improved selection/join estimates. (summarized by gpt-5-mini on Feb 09 2026)

Paper ID: h5112d9d5c31a0e33
Venue: CIDR
Year: 2020
Pagerank: 5.3305234e-05
Overall Rank: 8,363 | 43.95%
DOI: -
PDF: Download (CC BY 3.0)

Incoming Non-self Citations Over Time

Authors

1. Guido Moerkotte (University of Mannheim)
2. Axel Hertzschuch (Technical University of Dresden)

BibTeX Citation

@inproceedings{moerkotte_cidr20,
        address = {Amsterdam, Netherlands},
        series = {{CIDR} '20},
        title = {{alpha to omega: The Greek Alphabet of Sampling}},
        booktitle = {Proceedings of the {Conference} on {Innovative} {Data} {Systems} {Research}},
        author = {Moerkotte, Guido and Hertzschuch, Axel},
        year = {2020}
}

Incoming Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 6 of 6 citing papers.

Rank	Citing Paper	Year	Venue	Pagerank
3,995	Simplicity Done Right for Join Ordering	2021	CIDR	6.8530469e-05
5,245	FASTgres: Making Learned Query Optimizer Hinting Effective	2023	VLDB	6.1995935e-05
10,070	Cardinality Estimation of LIKE Predicate Queries using Deep Learning	2025	SIGMOD	5.0733319e-05
10,249	Turbo-Charging SPJ Query Plans with Learned Physical Join Operator Selections	2022	VLDB	5.0412674e-05
11,321	ACE: A Cardinality Estimator for Set-Valued Queries	2025	VLDB	4.9605343e-05
11,353	Cardinality Estimation for Having-Clauses	2025	VLDB	4.9605343e-05

Outgoing Citations (Sorted by Pagerank)

Showing 17 of 17 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
57	On Random Sampling over Joins	1999	SIGMOD	0.0003999751
91	On the Propagation of Errors in the Size of Join Results	1991	SIGMOD	0.00034691614
138	Join Synopses for Approximate Query Answering	1999	SIGMOD	0.00029532435
268	Distinct Sampling for Highly-Accurate Answers to Distinct Values Queries and Event Reports	2001	VLDB	0.00022654182
296	Towards Estimation Error Guarantees for Distinct Values	2000	PODS	0.00021874894
346	Sequential Sampling Procedures For Query Size Estimation	1992	SIGMOD	0.00020265363
381	Preventing Bad Plans by Bounding the Impact of Cardinality Estimation Errors	2009	VLDB	0.00019497061
689	Cardinality Estimation Done Right: Index-Based Join Sampling	2017	CIDR	0.00014725904
793	Random Sampling over Joins Revisited	2018	SIGMOD	0.00013903938
824	Adaptive Ordering of Pipelined Stream Filters	2004	SIGMOD	0.0001360282
1,206	Fixed-Precision Estimation of Join Selectivity	1993	PODS	0.00011510881
1,681	Two-Level Sampling for Join Size Estimation	2017	SIGMOD	9.8821344e-05
1,896	CS2: A New Database Synopsis for Query Estimation	2013	SIGMOD	9.4010932e-05
2,438	Cardinality Estimation Using Sample Views with Quality Assurance	2007	SIGMOD	8.4532693e-05
5,815	Exploiting Ordered Dictionaries to Efficiently Construct Histograms with Q-Error Guarantees in SAP HANA	2014	SIGMOD	5.9683874e-05
6,122	Optimization of Conjunctive Predicates for Main Memory Column Stores	2016	VLDB	5.8638562e-05

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